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Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

theatlantic.com

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Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#61

Post by seanmcdirmid »

futhey wrote: post #40
jwilliams wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spain's youth unemployment is astronomical (55%+). Young people with useful skills are increasing choosing to emigrate -- With lots of encouragement too. e.g. Germany is actively recruiting Spanish Engineers to fill labour gaps there. Without structural changes, no amount of youth is going to dig them out.

Yes, and in recent years Spaniards have been immigrating to South America to take incredible cuts in pay to do jobs (Often regardless of legal status) that require few of the qualifications, if any, they had earned in Spain.

How is this comment related to parent?

As long as we are wildly off topic, a lot of young people in Japan are "encouraged" to move to Bangkok to do Japanese customer service jobs, where they can be paid less.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#62

Post by seanmcdirmid »

w1ntermute wrote: post #8
apalmer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and No In societies of extreme poverty children have long been viewed a hedge against old age

That only works because of the lack of child labor laws and the lack of an advanced economy in which education is required in order to get a well-paying job in countries where extreme poverty is commonplace.

You didn't read parent right: the child will be an adult when the parents are older. The more kids you have, the more likely at least one will be successful enough as an adult to take care of you.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#63

Post by brianbreslin »

Tangaroa wrote: post #7

Long-term unemployment is happening in the US too: http://blogs.cfr.org/kahn/2013/04/17/our-long-term-unemploym... Unemployment in the US is near 15% including U6, or near 23% if using pre-1994 counting methods: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart... (On that subject, I'm looking for work in the north SF bay area, Sonoma/Marin region)

You might want to link to your LinkedIn if you want a new job.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#64

Post by icambron »

antiterra wrote: post #12
krugmanlol wrote: post #10

And we still think krugman is a god.

I'm guessing you're not here for any kind of rational discussion, but, could you explain a little bit about your motivation to post that comment? I'm not sure I've seen a pro-Krugman bias on news.yc. Even among most of those who think he's right, I'm not sure that deification is an accurate description. In this case, it's particularly confusing, since Spain is one of Krugman's "look, austerity is bad" poster children…

It would also be very surprising if he didn't outright loathe the employment regulations that are strangling Spain. He is an economist, after all. I'm not Krugman accolite, but the "there are bad things happening so Krugman is wrong" logic is just weird.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#67

Post by curt »

robryan wrote: post #17

What the is the precedent for austerity? What countries have used it successfully to get out of recession and improve unemployment?

Sweden and Canada are the best two examples where austerity worked. Need to realize that there is no austerity in Europe, every economy is still spending more than they were just 5 years ago.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#68

Post by dualogy »

mseebach wrote: post #16
jwcooper wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany isn't completely innocent here though either, even though it can look like they were frugal during the boom years. From Michael Pettis [1]: The strength of the German economy in recent years has largely to do with its export success. But for Germany to run a large current account surplus – the consequence I would argue of domestic policies aimed at suppressing consumption and subsidizing production – Spain an…

It was certainly very convenient for the germans to have some takers for their cheap bonds, but the fact remains that nobody forced the peripheral countries to live beyond their means and to refrain from implementing necessary reforms.

> nobody forced the peripheral countries to live beyond their means and to refrain from implementing necessary reforms

Actually, to "force members to stop such ways" was the plan for the EUR/ECB/Maastricht from the beginning. But it's either not working out as planned, or taking way longer than planned.....

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#69

Post by rayiner »

Tangaroa wrote: post #7

Long-term unemployment is happening in the US too: http://blogs.cfr.org/kahn/2013/04/17/our-long-term-unemploym... Unemployment in the US is near 15% including U6, or near 23% if using pre-1994 counting methods: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart... (On that subject, I'm looking for work in the north SF bay area, Sonoma/Marin region)

The SGS numbers are basically fictional. See this contemporaneous discussion of what really changed between the pre-1994 and post-1994 counting methods: http://www.bls.gov/mlr/1995/10/art3full.pdf. The current U4-U6 do include discouraged workers, they simply require the person to indicate on the survey that they have searched for a job in the past year rather than the unworkably vague prior methodology that simply asked whether the person wanted a job. See: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/08/discouraged-by-the-medi....

The most sensible employment measure is U4 (official unemployment + people who have searched for a job in the last year). U5 and U6 are far too sensitive to demographic changes to serve as a good basis for comparison. E.g. since the 1950's the work force has added a lot of female part-time workers that are counted in U6, but would have been stay-at-home wives in the 1950's and thus not counted as unemployed at all. Also, older people have always been over-represented among the marginally-attached, part-time work force, and as the population ages there are naturally more of this demographic. Both trends inflate U6, but neither are a negative indicator for the economy per se.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#70

Post by Sevein »

tsotha wrote: post #34
eksith wrote: post #2

The labor disparity between senior workers and young ones will lead to a lot more trouble. Irrational people take out their frustrations on the easiest target; irrational young people even more so. I'm not sure if the article's doom and gloom is actually reflected in reality though. Most people are averse to letting society collapse (especially when they've had a history of it standing upright and stable for a long t…

>Spain doesn't "just" need stimulus, it needs well guided and allocated stimulus or it will accomplish nothing. The last thing Spain needs is "stimulus". What they need to do is fix the labor market so it's possible to fire people. When employers can't fire people they only hire as an absolute last resort. That means companies can't exploit growth opportunities as easily and it means employers are unlikely to gamble…

It's not like that anymore. Some agressive reforms have been done in the last years and they didn't help much.
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