Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

thesoundingline.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 145 posts

Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#101

Post by ptaipale »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #70
netrus wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German perspective: Wow, what a dramatic shift in Eastern Germany! Maybe it is just a general upwards trend in Germany with little room for improvement in Southern Germany, but it might also be the beginning of the end of Eastern Germany's under performance. I will certainly investigate further.

I think it could do with an extra dimension for eastern Germany, e.g. wages or relative wealth; having low unemployment is good, but if there's a big wage / wealth discrepancy between east and west there's still room for improvement.

I would expect that the discrepancy that matters - wages vs. cost of living - has much bigger difference if you go from East Germany to Poland, Czech Republic or Slovakia, rather than in comparison to West Germany. I.e. purchasing power drops much more when you go east, compared to going west.

Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#102

Post by lmm »

aclimatt wrote: post #29
tda wrote: post #8

I wonder how many plausible alternative captions we can come up with for this map? A few takes: * Corruption level (blue is less) * Income per capita (blue is more) * Education level (blue is better) * Price of a beer (blue is more) * etc

Just overlay a map of median temperatures and you'll have some interesting insight.

I'm not sure how much a simple median would tell you. My instinct is that how much the climate varies over the year might be as or more important than the point average.

Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#103

Post by dandellion »

ProblemFactory wrote: post #42
microtonal wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does matter. Consider of a hypothetical country consisting of two equally large regions. One region is desert, only 10,000 people live there and unemployment rate is 20%. In the other region there are 1M people and the employment rate is 3%. Now if you look at the map, it seems that the country is doing pretty poorly. Half of the country has a bad employment rate. Whereas in reality it only affect a small portion…

> One region is desert, only 10,000 people live there > In the other region there are 1M people This has already been normalized: these are European NUTS-2 regions, which are drawn to contain roughly equal populations. Each NUTS-2 region is supposed to be 800k to 3 million people per region. It's not perfect, but it's not just geographical borders with wildly different populations. For example, London is split into 5…

I don't know about the other countries in the map but I can see La Rioja, Spain, which has a bit over 300k people, while Catalonia has more than 7M. So I'm not sure what you're saying really applies.

Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#104

Post by dx034 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #69
gpvos wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that in most countries, if you are on the dole, you must search for work if you are capable, or you get a severe reduction in your financial support.

There are some people that have just given up on finding a job; they're able and willing to work, but because of reasons they can't find a job. Those might be on the dole, but they might also be able to survive off of a single income. These stats should have a category "wants to work but can't find any, and is not entitled to benefits". Or "Able to work but doesn't need to because rich".

Underemployment reports in the US include those people. They usually also include people working part-time "for economical reasons". But that's considered underemployment, not unemployment.

Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#105

Post by dx034 »

ajuc wrote: post #74
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some people that have just given up on finding a job; they're able and willing to work, but because of reasons they can't find a job. Those might be on the dole, but they might also be able to survive off of a single income. These stats should have a category "wants to work but can't find any, and is not entitled to benefits". Or "Able to work but doesn't need to because rich".

In my country if you are on a dole and the bureau of employment finds a job for you (usually not very nice job) - you have to take it or have a good reason why you can't (health for example). If you don't - you're left on your own. Also, unemployment benefits end after 6 months no matter what.

Which sounds fair, you can still apply for jobs in your sector while you're on the other job. But doing something is usually better than doing nothing, even if it's unqualified work and doesn't pay well.

Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#106

Post by tluyben2 »

jahvo wrote: post #32
nkkollaw wrote: post #5

I'd like to add that actual figures for Italy are hard to estimate correctly. Many, many people work under the table, very often pretending that they're still out of work to keep getting the unemployment check.

Same in Spain. People are obviously working. Otherwise there would be riots in the streets already, haha.

Yep, I have many friends who are officially unemployed; all are working. Quite hard as well. The system in Spain does not encourage paying taxes, starting companies or hiring people legally. It is quite bad but I do not see it fixed soon.

Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#107

Post by dahauns »

fabianmg wrote: post #30
tda wrote: post #8

I wonder how many plausible alternative captions we can come up with for this map? A few takes: * Corruption level (blue is less) * Income per capita (blue is more) * Education level (blue is better) * Price of a beer (blue is more) * etc

Education?. Really?. "Regarding Europe’s other large countries, the proportions were 47.1% for Britain, 31.9% in Germany (which retains a strong tradition of technical education), 43.6% in France, 40.1% in Spain and 39.1% in Poland." http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=2013041...

As you already imply with Germany: One big problem I have with educational statistics is that they are usually completely ignoring the value of dual education systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_education_system

Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#108

Post by ohthehugemanate »

biztos wrote: post #36

Two days ago I was watching a German TV show in which the panelists discussed the low-wage-job boom: apparently unemployment is very low (5.6%) but an unhealthy portion of the jobs people are working are low-wage and/or exploitative of labor, and thus not really contributing to long-term social stability. If too many people are working minimum wage and the minimum wage isn't realistic then sooner or later you have a…

Careful not to fall into the mental trap of comparing with an imaginary situation. No one has ever achieved 100% employment without involving gunpoint; you have to decide between the real world alternatives. Namely: is it better to have more people on social assistance, or more people on very low wage? (Of course, here in Germany it's mixed - you get lots of social assistance based on your income level. Plus, "better" is a tricky word to pin down...)

Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#109

Post by tom_mellior »

lmm wrote: post #96
tom_mellior wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some countries' job centers put jobless people into bullshit training courses that do nothing for them, but being in a course means you are not counted as "looking"/"available" for a while. Other countries do not do this. The "same restrictions" apply, but countries in the first category will have fewer "unemployed" people even if they have the same number of discouraged/underemployed/jobless/whatever people. Is that…

Yes it is, since those countries allow people to claim unemployment while not looking for work (via a rather silly rigmarole way of doing so, but still). At the sharp end, there are fewer people in that country who want a job (whether because they'll lose their unemployment if they don't get one or otherwise) and can't get it.

All that is true for the unemployment rate itself. It just means that the unemployment rate is not a useful proxy for a country's economic health, as it is often taken to be.

Re: The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe

#110

Post by dx034 »

cleansy wrote: post #82
netrus wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German perspective: Wow, what a dramatic shift in Eastern Germany! Maybe it is just a general upwards trend in Germany with little room for improvement in Southern Germany, but it might also be the beginning of the end of Eastern Germany's under performance. I will certainly investigate further.

I am from Brandenburg originally and am very surprised that Berlins unemployment rate is higher than Brandenburg's?! I checked statista[1][2] and indeed, it is. When I grew up it was around 18%. 1: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/2519/umfrage/... 2: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/762452/umfrag...

People moving away from the countryside to cities could be a big factor. That leaves rural areas with a lot of older folks (that don't count as unemployed) while jobseekers are in bigger cities. Why should you be unemployed in rural Brandenburg when you could as well move to Berlin where there's a higher chance for a job? That could also explain why the rate in Northeastern Germany has decreased that much, both areas are mostly rural.
Post reply on HN