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The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

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Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#121

Post by zimzam »

roenxi wrote: post #97
toomanybeersies wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the standard definition for unemployment. An unemployed person is generally considered to be someone who would want to be employed, but is not. It is meant to be a measurement of the number of people who want jobs, but are unable to get them. There are other measurements for labour force participation, which are usually fairly easy to find, and are a proportion of people who are legally able to work, against t…

It is as good a time as any to wish a pox on all jargon and reflect that a person with no employment is unlikely to be unemployed. If anyone else is interested, a very light search into the history of when they picked that measure as the standard suggests it has been with us since ~1930. Apparently the nature of complaints hasn't changed much over the years. [1] davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/origins-of-unemployment.p…

The jargon exists because the category is useful in answering the question "how is the economy doing".

If we included people who are retired then we would see unemployment go up and down in correlation with generation sizes: when the baby boomers retire the number of "unemployed" people would go up dramatically. But that confuses the picture of whether businesses are hiring.

Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#122

Post by rsynnott »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #75
maephisto wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The South America / islands and included because they are territories belonging to a EU country (France, Spain, Portugal). Turkey is in there because it's a candidate country.

Is it still? It's a human rights nightmare and I don't think the EU should have anything to do with Turkey while Erdogan is still in power.

It's still a candidate. It's moving backwards rather than forwards on its acceptance criteria, and realistically won't be joining anytime soon, but it's still a candidate.

Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#124

Post by DanBC »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #90
gpvos wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed. A small minority maybe. Dishonesty can be hard work.

I'm not saying it's widespread, nor necessarily that easy (I don't know) but every few weeks I'm looking at our local news online and there's a story of someone claiming jobseekers, housing benefit, disability or attendance allowances, and they're working (and paying taxes it seems, so it should have been easy to catch them). 5s Google - http://www.4ni.co.uk/northern-ireland-news/243195/other-news... , some guy claim…

The rate of fraud on benefits is really low. Yes, it does happen, and a few people do get away with it for a long time. But it's wrong to suggest that it's widespread, and doing so causes harm because it encourages the Hostile Environment stuff.

Looking at your link, these people were caught reasonably quickly.

One of the people in your link managed to claim just £231. At his age he'd be getting £73 per week, so he fraudulently claimed less than a month.

It's harder to work out the other person, because they were also claiming housing benefit.

He lived at Ballysillan Crescent, Belfast, which is a B14 post code. Local housing allowance rates are https://www.nihe.gov.uk/index/benefits/lha/current_lha_rates...

Here's that street on Google maps: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.6291805,-5.9663763,3a,75y,...

Let's take the one bedroom rate of £86.16 per week, plus £73.10 per week = £159.26 per week. (this assumes he claims as a single person, and it lowers the weekly amount. I do this because I want to maximise the time he claimed for as a worst case). £4,114 / £159 = = 25 weeks. So, about 6 months. If he was claiming the 2 bedroom rate, or was claiming JSA as a couple he would have got more moeny per week, and so was caught much quicker.

You'll find similar in the other cases. People try it and they usually get caught within a year.

Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#126

Post by esbranson »

zimzam wrote: post #121
roenxi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is as good a time as any to wish a pox on all jargon and reflect that a person with no employment is unlikely to be unemployed. If anyone else is interested, a very light search into the history of when they picked that measure as the standard suggests it has been with us since ~1930. Apparently the nature of complaints hasn't changed much over the years. [1] davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/origins-of-unemployment.p…

The jargon exists because the category is useful in answering the question "how is the economy doing". If we included people who are retired then we would see unemployment go up and down in correlation with generation sizes: when the baby boomers retire the number of "unemployed" people would go up dramatically. But that confuses the picture of whether businesses are hiring.

Hence why the question should be and is limited to ages 25-54 year olds. A "retired" 25 year old should be included in the definition of unemployment.

However, the 25-54 unemployment rate (the opposite of the "employment rate") is not calculated by state or locality in the US.

Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#128

Post by macintux »

tom_mellior wrote: post #114
macintux wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but being in a course means you are not counted as "looking"/"available" for a while Are there enough people to whom that distinction applies to be more than statistical noise relative to the other regional variations that would have an impact? Seems like a minor nit to pick in the grand scheme of things.

Austria is regularly criticized for doing this through such measures and others (pushing people into early retirement as well). Here is a thing in English that seems to come for free if you give them bogus personal data: https://www.agenda-austria.at/en/publication/austria-the-lan... A longer German blurb about this study is here: https://www.agenda-austria.at/oesterreich-das-land-der-verst... They claim 250,000 hidd…

Thanks, surprised it's that significant of an impact.

Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#130

Post by pbhjpbhj »

DanBC wrote: post #124
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying it's widespread, nor necessarily that easy (I don't know) but every few weeks I'm looking at our local news online and there's a story of someone claiming jobseekers, housing benefit, disability or attendance allowances, and they're working (and paying taxes it seems, so it should have been easy to catch them). 5s Google - http://www.4ni.co.uk/northern-ireland-news/243195/other-news... , some guy claim…

The rate of fraud on benefits is really low. Yes, it does happen, and a few people do get away with it for a long time. But it's wrong to suggest that it's widespread, and doing so causes harm because it encourages the Hostile Environment stuff. Looking at your link, these people were caught reasonably quickly. One of the people in your link managed to claim just £231. At his age he'd be getting £73 per week, so he f…

I don't think I said it was widespread, or anything to indicate that? I've been on Jobseekers and am likely to be again: yes we should guard against creating a hostile environment and assuming everyone is on the make, but pretending there's no fraud at all is surely not the way.

Are few people dishonest, or are most dishonest people caught.

My concern is if the system encourages moral compromise for survival and what this means for our society as a whole.

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