Council 17 December 2014 Room Document No. 5
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THE ECONOMIC, FINANCIAL AND SOCIAL SITUATION:
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
I. THE GLOBAL OUTLOOK AND POLICY CONSIDERATIONS 1. Recent developments and near-term prospects
The world economy is running in low gear. Global growth is projected to be 3.3% this year, rising to 3.5% in 2015 and 3.9% in 2016. Despite the improvement, the projected growth rate in 2016 is still slightly below the 1995-2007 average of 4%.
Trade growth has been weak in most economies. Global trade intensity is still below the pre-crisis trend and trade volumes continue to expand broadly in line with activity this year. An important factor in the weakness of trade growth is the stagnation in the euro area, given that the EU is a trade-intensive region. Trade intensity is expected to rise slowly over time as emerging countries continue to both increase their openness and account for a larger share of the world economy.
The oil price has recently fallen below $60 for the first time in five years. This price shock is positive news for the world economy as a whole, although not for all countries. The fall in oil prices raises real incomes and should boost consumption and investment in the major economies, including the United States, even though it is now a net oil exporter. Adjusting to low oil prices will, by contrast, be difficult for some oil producers, particularly those among the emerging economies, including Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria and some Middle Eastern countries.
In the United States, recent data continue to point to a solid recovery. In particular, strong employment gains should sustain household consumption growth, while the drag from fiscal consolidation is diminishing. Although the unemployment rate is now nearly back to pre-crisis levels, other indicators suggest that substantial labour-market slack remains. The labour force participation rate has flattened out, but at low levels, while real wage growth is subdued and the proportion of employees working part-time remains elevated.
In Japan, the negative effects of the consumption tax hike were larger than expected. The downward revision of third quarter GDP growth from -1.6% to -1.9% surprised most observers, as weaker investment in smaller firms not included in the corporate statistics resulted in a larger drop in business investment. This was aggravated by downward revisions in public and residential investment. Meanwhile, the rebound in consumption has so far been weak and real wage growth remains negative, despite rising nominal wage gains. Underlying inflation, stripping out the effects of the consumption tax increase, has slipped back to about 1%. The unexpectedly large impact of the tax hike on growth led the government to propose postponing the second scheduled increase in late 2015. The Government sought and obtained a new electoral mandate for this strategy and Abenomics more broadly.
Indicators of real activity in the euro area have generally continued to fall short of expectations and inflation continues to drift down, ever further below the ECB’s target of close to but below 2%. The improvement in labour market conditions has largely stalled, with the area-wide unemployment rate remaining at 11.5% in November.
The failure of the euro area to deliver a vigorous economic recovery was reflected in political and financial tensions in Greece, where the prospect of possible fresh elections that could deliver a
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populist government led to a spike in Greek bond yields in recent weeks. On a more positive note, the European Commission proposed the creation of a European Fund for Strategic Investment in order to leverage a limited contribution of public money into €315 billion in additional fixed investment. Given its size in relation to the European economy and the time it will take to bear fruit, the initiative is unlikely to make a significant difference to EU growth in the near term.
2. Policy requirements
Monetary policy needs to support demand in most major economies, but will need to be more differentiated than in recent years given the divergence in countries’ position in the cycle, as well as differing risks to financial stability.
In the United States, the Federal Reserve should start raising interest rates in the second half of 2015 if the recovery evolves along lines of the November 2014 Economic Outlook projections.
The need for the ECB to expand its monetary support beyond currently announced measures has been underlined by the most recent developments, including weak demand by banks for TLTROs.
The ECB must move quickly to implement sizeable asset purchases (“quantitative easing”) in order to get inflation back on track. Further asset purchases could include lower-rated asset-backed securities, corporate bonds and government bonds.
Similarly, weaker-than-expected output and price data in Japan underscore the need for the Bank of Japan to maintain its recently expanded "quantitative and qualitative monetary easing” until the inflation target has been sustainably achieved.
In China, the authorities continue to face the challenge of balancing support for activity with bringing about an orderly slowdown in credit growth. Most recently, the People’s Bank of China cut a series of interest rates and lowered some reserve requirements. The balance of risks favours maintaining an accommodative monetary policy in the near term while proceeding with macroprudential regulation and the progressive liberalisation of the financial sector to bolster financial stability.
Significant progress has been made in strengthening the fiscal position in many advanced economies and the pace of fiscal consolidation is set to slow sharply in the coming years, helping to support recovery. In addition, a reversal of the compression of public investment would help to stimulate aggregate demand in the short run and in the long run increase the stock of productive capital, raising potential output.
In the euro area, the pace of fiscal adjustment has generally slowed but the remaining scope within the EU fiscal framework to further ease fiscal consolidation should be used in order to support demand and facilitate structural reforms. Deviations from official targets should accord with the flexibility available under special provisions in the EU fiscal rules, and should be backed by additional structural reform effort.
The recently announced easing of planned fiscal consolidation in Japan is justified by economic weakness, but it only accentuates the importance of producing a detailed and credible fiscal consolidation plan, complemented by ambitious structural reforms, to turn the public debt dynamics around.
In the United States, cyclical improvements, the expiration of temporary stimulus, fiscal austerity measures and declining borrowing costs have all narrowed the budget deficit in recent years, and the ratio of public debt to GDP has now largely stabilised. The planned slowdown in the pace of fiscal
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adjustment is therefore warranted, and the priority should be to make public spending more favourable to growth. In addition, legislators should agree on a medium-term fiscal programme to address long-term challenges. A steady structural budget improvement of between ¼ and ½ per cent of GDP per year would put the public debt ratio on a downward path and help prepare for the pressures that an ageing population will put on the public finances.
II. FINANCIAL MARKETS
The year is coming to a close and not on an optimistic note, (as of Friday 12 December). The problems in the world economy are manifold, and while a lot of energy has been expended on bank reform (though not evenly across borders), much less has been done to reform the international monetary system and Europe (where deflation pressure is gaining more traction). Policies continue in the direction of exporting deflation, growth is slowing, commodity prices are collapsing, and signs of excess have emerged as a consequence of monetary policy responses to the above. A test of market liquidity is building up in financial markets. After 6 years of monetary easy, one needs to ponder what is going on. This has been a balance sheet recession like the 1930’s, but with an easing this time as opposed to a tightening monetary response (in the 30’s this easing only occurred with the break with gold). But real investors appear to be ‘looking through’ low rates and QE towards the exit, and hence do not respond to distorted price signals. The previous major balance sheet recession was followed by Bretton Woods—a major rethinking of the global monetary system.
Something similar will be needed this time too.
Specific comments based on the markets follow:
• The falling oil price is partly due to excess supply following recent OPEC decisions in its timing—
but it also reflects a slowing in the global economy and China in particular. Why? Because it is not only oil prices. All commodity prices are falling and have been for some time.
• The falling oil price will, if sustained, have an impact on the US fracking industry, and oil related activities generally. These companies are geared in the development phase and will come up for the rolling of debt at relatively short intervals. There is a concern that some could fail (not have their debt rolled), and that more conservatism could come into this “icon”
for the recovery in US confidence and investment. A negative impact on animal spirits from this source is a risk.
• The ECB has a mandate to achieve price stability, and the south of Europe and now the most recent French inflation data suggests they are well behind the curve here. The debate goes on as to when the ECB will have to carry out QE policies with sovereign debt (to the tune of
€1tn) to get back to its 2012 balance sheet, and some in the markets debate whether even this will be enough to meet their mandate. This is largely an exporting deflation strategy, if it works, since at the zero bound for interest rates the Euro is the main transmission channel for inflation (certainly not via the still deleveraging bank balance sheets).
• The second round effects of falling oil prices and collapsing commodity prices have not yet hit the inflation numbers, but they likely will do so.
• European bank share prices before and after the stress test compared to the USA tell quite different stories about the health of bank balance sheets, bank capitalisation and the support for growth. Regulators in Europe have not orchestrated “good deleveraging”. A big capital buffer to absorb future pressures is essential, and this liquidity test will come at some
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point. Countries focused on being ready for this (with higher capital buffers) as monetary normalisation follows are to be congratulated.
• Pressure on Greek banks is rising, as reflected in share price behaviour. Rightly or wrongly, this is due to market concerns about the politics and the risk of a resumption of the Euro crisis.
• The markets are beginning to reflect some of these risks, in recent days. The Fed wants to take the punch bowl away, but the party-goers don’t want to leave. Volatility has not been tested yet. But margin debt is at record levels, market-maker inventory has fallen sharply and market investors have been forced into higher yielding stocks and bonds—buying the liquidity premium which will be difficult to exit in a crisis. The rising dollar is a key risk indicator, that will bring pressure into emerging markets—and if it goes higher the USA itself will have to absorb exporting deflation pressures from elsewhere.
III. LATEST LABOUR MARKET AND WAGE DEVELOPMENTS
1. The labour market recovery continues to be very uneven across countries, with the OECD unemployment rate still well above its pre-crisis level
o After having remained essentially unchanged around 8% for nearly three years, the OECD harmonised unemployment rate has been falling gradually since late 2013, reaching 7.2% in October 2014 (see Table 1). This is down 1.3 percentage points from its post-war high of 8.5%
in October 2009, but still significantly higher than its level prior to the crisis. Nearly 44 million persons are currently unemployed in the OECD area, which is 11.2 million more than immediately preceding the crisis.
o Even during the extended period when the OECD average remained stuck at around 8%, this reflected the offsetting impacts of gradually declining unemployment in a number of countries, including Japan and the United States, and further increases in a number of Euro area countries (see Figure 1). Unemployment in the Euro area topped at 12% in the middle of 2013 and has since eased to 11.5% in October 2014, but is still far higher than in the United States and, especially, Japan.
o Recent labour market trends in the Euro area reflect different developments in different countries (see Figure 2). Recent reductions in unemployment in Greece, Portugal and Spain, albeit still at a very high levels, help to explain why the Euro area average rate has eased slightly during the past year. By contrast, unemployment recently has been largely stable in France and Italy.
o The highest unemployment rates in October were in Greece (25.9%, August 2014), Spain (24.0%), Portugal (13.4%), Italy (13.2%), the Slovak Republic (12.9%), Ireland (10.9%), France (10.5%) and Turkey (10.4%, August 2014). The lowest rates were recorded in Japan (3.5%), Korea (3.5%), Norway (3.7%, September 2014), Switzerland (4.4, Q2 2014), Mexico (4.7%), Germany (4.9%), Austria (5.1%), Iceland (5.1%), New Zealand (5.4%, Q63 2014), the Czech Republic (5.7%), Israel (5.7%), the United States (5.8%, November 2014) and the United Kingdom (5.9%, August 2014).
o The unemployment rate in the United States was unchanged at 5.8% in November, its lowest level since July 2008. Job growth was particularly strong in November with US payroll employment rising by 321 thousand, well above the already robust average monthly gain of
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224 thousand over the prior 12 months. Despite these largely favorable developments, the US labour market recovery still has a long way to go. The civilian labour force participation and employment rates were, respectively, 62.8% and 59.2% in November, unchanged since the previous month.1 Whereas the unemployment rate is now 1.2 percentage points lower than in November 2013, the employment-population ratio rose by only 0.6 percentage point over the past year and the labour force participation rate fell by 0.2 percentage point. The employment and participation rates remain well below their pre-crisis levels and only a part of this decline can be explained by population ageing.
o The Canadian unemployment rate increased to 6.6% in November 2014, 0.1 percentage points higher than the previous month, but down 0.5 percentage points from one year earlier.
Employment decreased by 10.7 thousand since October (-0.1%) driven by losses among men, but was up 146 thousand over the previous 12 months (+0.8%).
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2. Latest OECD projections imply only muted improvements in labour market conditions during the next two years
o The Employment Outlook 96, which was released in November 2014, projects that growth will remain modest by past norms and that unemployment will stay much above pre-crisis levels in many OECD economies (see shaded areas in Figures 1 and 2). In particular, the unemployment rate is projected to remain at or above 10% at the end of 2016 in a number of Euro area countries, even though it will then have been nine years since the global economic crisis began. As a result of slow growth, particularly in the Euro area, large discrepancies in labor market conditions across OECD countries are expected to persist.
o Based on quarterly data, the OECD average unemployment rate peaked at 2.9 percentage points above its Q4 2007 level in Q3 2009 (Figure 3). The OECD unemployment gap has since declined to 1.8 percentage points (about 60% of the maximum gap) and is projected to decline further to 1.2 percentage point at the end of 2016 (about 40% of the maximum gap). However, these OECD averages conceal large differences in the size of the initial increase in unemployment and the speed with which unemployment has returned to its pre-crisis level. A larger initial increase in unemployment does not necessarily mean a longer period is required to bring unemployment back down to its pre-crisis level.
o The Euro area and the United States provide an interesting comparison. The recessionary increase in unemployment was of a similar magnitude in both areas (4.6 and 5.1 percentage points, respectively). However, only a small share of the recessionary increase in unemployment has been absorbed thus far in the Euro area, whereas labour market recovery has gone much further in the United States. By the end of 2016, the Euro area unemployment gap is projected to be 3.4 percentage points, whereas the US gap will have been reduced to just 0.6 percentage points.
o The four countries where the unemployment rate rose by more than ten percentage points following the crisis demonstrate how even a very large initial rise in unemployment need not preclude a relatively rapid return towards the pre-crisis level. Estonia illustrates this possibility since its 14.3 percentage-point maximum unemployment gap has since fallen to 3.1. By contrast, three-quarters or more of the huge increases in unemployment in Greece and Spain is predicted to remain at the end of 2016. The fourth of the hardest hit countries, Ireland, has had an intermediate degree of success in reversing the strong initial increase in unemployment.
1 Following US practice, these participation and employment rates refer to the population ages 16 and over.
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o Since poor employment prospects can depress participation rates, post-crisis changes in the employment rate (i.e. the share of the working-age population that is employed) provide a more comprehensive measure of the labour market slack than do changes in the unemployment rate. In fact, the two indicators provide a very similar picture of the impact of the global economic crisis and slow and uneven economic recovery in most OECD countries (Figure 4).
o The main exception is the United States where the post-2007 fall in participation is quantitatively much larger than the rise in unemployment. Whereas the unemployment rate is now just 0.8 percentage points about its level at the end of 2007, the employment rate is down by 4.0 percentage points due to a sharp fall in the participation rate. While some of the decrease in participation can be attributed to population ageing, participation rates have also fallen for prime-age and, especially, youth. US participation rates also fell during the milder recession in 2000-01 and only partially recovered during the subsequent economic recovery.
This experience has raised concerns that a downward ratchet effect on participation rates could be operating that could permanently lower employment rates and future living standards, if it is not reversed.
o Despite generally difficult labour market conditions in recent years, participation rates have increased in a number of OECD countries. In many cases this reflects longer-run trends towards greater labour market participation by women or later retirement.
3. While the rise in unemployment since the start of the crisis remains largely cyclical, its structural component has also increased
o The prolonged period of high unemployment and the rise in long-term unemployment in a number of OECD countries have raised concerns that structural joblessness has increased.
Earlier deep recessions have sometimes left a legacy of persistently higher unemployment, leading some economists to conjecture that “hysteresis effects” can prevent an output recovery from driving unemployment back down to its pre-recession level.
o The OECD Economic Outlook 2014, Volume 2, which was released in November, presents new estimates of the NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment) which provide a measure of the extent to which structural unemployment has increased since the global financial crisis began. The new NAIRU estimates show that the level of structural unemployment increased in 26 out of the 34 OECD countries between 2008 and 2014.
However, no additional increase is predicted between 2014 and 2016 on average (Figure 5).
o In most of the countries where structural unemployment has increased, the increase has been small. However, large increases have occurred in several countries. Most alarmingly, the NAIRU rose by more than 4 percentage points in Greece and Spain, and by more than 2 percentage points in four other OECD countries (Ireland, Portugal, Slovenia and the Slovak Republic). In marked contrast, the NAIRU has fallen by 2.9 percentage points since 2008 in Israel and by 1.9 percentage points in Germany.
o The recent rise in structural unemployment in a large majority of OECD countries is probably a result of a number of factors that come into play when labour market slack is high for an extended period of time. Persons experiencing long-term unemployment can enter into a downward spiral that makes it more and more difficult for them to find a job the longer they have been out of work. Among the factors potentially at work are the negative impacts of long-term joblessness on mental and physical health, as well as stigma attached to this group
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by some employers, who are reluctant to recruit from among the long-term unemployed. At the level of the overall labour market, rising structural employment could also reflect an increased mismatch of job vacancies and unemployed jobseekers across sectors or occupation.
o The NAIRU estimates make it possible to decompose the post-crisis increase in the unemployment rate into its cyclical and structural components. This decomposition reveals that only a modest part of the increase in unemployment is structural (Figure 5). For the OECD area as a whole, the 0.2 percentage-point increase in structural unemployment since 2008 represents approximately 14% of the 1.4 percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate.
Put differently, higher cyclical unemployment due to weak aggregate demand accounts for approximately 86% of the increase in unemployment.
o Since currently high unemployment reflects both cyclical and structural factors, it is important to stimulate aggregate demand while also enacting structural reforms to lower structural unemployment. It is encouraging that some of the countries where unemployment has increased the most since the crisis, such as Italy and Spain, are placing a high priority on enacting structural labour market reforms.
4. Comparisons with earlier recessions
o A comparison of earlier recessions with the recent crisis shows that it is unfortunately not uncommon for deep recession to lead to a protracted period of high unemployment (see Figure 6). Indeed many OECD labour markets have never fully reversed the large increases in the unemployment rate that followed the first and second oil shocks in the 1970s. More recent business cycles make it clear that recessionary increases in unemployment can be fully unwound during the subsequent economic recovery, but the unemployment rate rises much more quickly when business conditions turn bad than it declines as business conditions improve following a recession.
o The global recession that began in 2008 led to a larger increase in unemployment than was seen during the previous two recessions and it is taking longer for the unemployment rate to return to its starting point. The key challenge for policy makers is to do everything possible to speed the recovery in employment and, in particular, to avoid that the long period of high cyclical unemployment leads to a permanent rise in structural unemployment.
o A comparison of the long-run evolution of unemployment rates in the Euro area and the United States confirms that both are subject to the same risk that recessionary increases in unemployment are only slowly reversed or, in the worst case scenario, result in lasting increases in structural unemployment. However, the US unemployment rate appears to be more reactive to cyclical conditions, rising more rapidly during recessions and coming down more rapidly during economic recoveries. This suggests that the labour markets in Euro area countries tend to be particularly vulnerable to persistence effects that cause recessionary increases in unemployment to be reabsorbed only very slowly. This observation confirms that structural labour market reforms should remain a priority in the Euro area.
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Figure 1. The labour market impact of the crisis and recovery has been highly uneven across countries
Unemployment rate, percentage of the labour force
Shaded area refers to the latest projections from the OECD Economic Outlook n°96.
Source: OECD Economic Outlook (database), http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eo-data-en.
Figure 2. Labour market conditions also vary within the Euro area
Unemployment rate, percentage of the labour force
Shaded area refers to the latest projections from the OECD Economic Outlook n°96.
* Series available only on an annual basis.
Source: OECD Economic Outlook (database), http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eo-data-en.
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13%
OECD Euro area (15)
Japan United States
0 5 10 15 20 25
% 30
France Germany
Greece* Italy
Portugal Spain
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Figure 3. Unemployment has started to decline, but further progress is required
A. Unemployment rate Percentage of the labour force
B. Unemployment gap
Percentage-points change in the unemployment rate since the onset of the crisis (Q4 2007)
Note: Countries shown by ascending order of the current unemployment rate (Q2 2014) in Panel A and of the maximum unemployment gap (country-specific peak) in Panel B.
a) Aggregate of 15 OECD countries of the euro area.
b) Annual values.
Source: OECD calculations based on OECD Economic Outlook (database), http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/data-00688-en.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30%
Current value
(Q2 2014) Start of the crisis
(Q4 2007) Projected value
(Q4 2016)
-5 0 5 10 15
% 20
Maximum gap
(country-specific peak) Current gap
(Q2 2014) Projected gap (Q4 2016)
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Figure 4. The jobs recovery is far from complete in a number of countries
A. Evolution of the employment-to-population ratio Percentage of the working-age population (aged 15 or more)
B. Employment gap
Percentage-points change in the employment rate since the onset of the crisis (Q4 2007)
Note: Countries shown by ascending order of the current employment rate (Q2 2014) in Panel A and of the maximum employment gap (country-specific trough) in Panel B.
a) Aggregate of 15 OECD countries of the euro area.
b) Annual values.
Source: OECD calculations based on OECD Economic Outlook (database), http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/data-00688-en.
30 40 50 60 70
% 80
Current
(Q2 2014) Start of the crisis
(Q4 2007) Projected value
(Q4 2016)
-15 -10 -5 0 5 10%
Maximum gap
(country-specific trough) Current gap
(Q2 2014) Projected gap (Q4 2016)
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Figure 5. The rise in unemployment since the start of the global financial crisis is largely cyclical, but the structural component has also increased in a number of countries
Percentage-point change during 2008-14
Note: NAIRU: Non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment. The countries are shown by ascending order of the change in the unemployment rate.
a) Aggregate of 15 OECD countries of the euro area.
Source: OECD calculations based on OECD Economic Outlook (database), http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/data-00688-en.
-5 0 5 10 15
% 20
NAIRU Unemployment Gap
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Figure 6. Severe recessions generate sharp increases in unemployment which are long-lasting and often not reversed completely in recoveries
Actual and projected unemployment rate, percentage of the labour force A. Euro areaa
9.1
10.7
9.1
10.0 11.9
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
% %
3 years and 9 months
4 years and 3 months
6 years and 6 months 5 years and
9 months 7 years
years 4
1 year and 9 months 2 years
and 6 months
8 years and 6 months
17 years and 3
months 9 years
9 years and 6 months
2 years and 6 months
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Figure 6. Severe recessions generate sharp increases in unemployment which are long-lasting and often not reversed completely in recoveries (Cont.)
Actual and projected unemployment rate, percentage of the labour force B. United States
Dashed line refers to the OECD projections.
a) Aggregated real GDP of 15 countries of the euro area.
Source: OECD calculations based on OECD Economic Outlook (database), http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/data-00688-en 6.0
8.9
10.7
7.6
6.2
9.9
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
% %
16 years and 3 months 24 years
3 years and 3 month s
7 years 5 years and
9 months 2 years
and 3 months
3 years and 6 months 4 years
and 3 months 3 years
and 9 months
8 years and 3 months
10 years and 3 months 5 years 9 years
3 years and 9 months
5 years and 3 months
3 years and 9 months
Council 21 December 2014 Room Document No. 5
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Table 1. Changes in harmonised unemployment since December 2007 Seasonally adjusted data
P: Provisional data as of 8 December 2014.
a) .August 2014 for Chile, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom; September 2014 for Estonia, Hungary, and Norway;
November 2014 for Canada and the United States; Q2 2014 for Switzerland; and Q3 2014 for New Zealand.
b) Information on data for Israel: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932315602.In order to ensure a comparison between the results based on the Quarterly Labour Force Survey and the new Monthly Labour Force Survey introduced in January 2012, the series have been chained using the chaining coefficients provided by the national authorities (For further details see http://www1.cbs.gov.il/publications12/saka0412m/pdf/intro_f_e.pdf).
c) Harmonised unemployment data for New Zealand and Switzerland are not available on a monthly basis but for comparison purposes the quarterly averages are reported on a monthly basis.
Source: OECD calculations based on the OECD Short-Term Labour Market Statistics Database (http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/data- 00046-en).
October 2014a
December 2007
%-points
change % change October 2014a
December 2007
Absolute
change % change
OECDp 7.2 5.6 1.6 28.4 43 755 32 540 11,215 34.5
G7p 6.2 5.5 0.7 13.6 23 068 19 849 3,219 16.2
European Union 10.0 6.9 3.1 44.9 24 413 16 423 7,990 48.7
Euro Area 11.5 7.3 4.2 57.5 18 395 11 463 6,932 60.5
Australia 6.2 4.3 1.9 44.9 772 476 296 62.1
Austria 5.1 4.0 1.1 27.5 225 169 56 33.1
Belgium 8.6 7.3 1.3 17.8 425 347 78 22.5
Canada 6.6 6.0 0.6 10.0 1 279 1 081 198 18.3
Chile 6.4 7.8 -1.3 -17.2 545 555 -10 -1.7
Czech Republic 5.7 4.8 0.9 18.7 300 251 49 19.5
Denmark 6.4 3.3 3.1 93.9 186 96 90 93.8
Estonia 7.5 4.1 3.4 82.9 51 28 23 82.1
Finland 8.9 6.5 2.4 36.9 239 175 64 36.6
France 10.5 7.4 3.1 41.9 3 093 2 107 986 46.8
Germany 4.9 8.1 -3.2 -39.5 2 062 3 284 -1,222 -37.2
Greece 25.9 8.1 17.8 219.8 1 242 402 840 209.0
Hungary 7.3 8.0 -0.7 -8.7 325 337 -12 -3.6
Iceland 5.1 2.5 2.6 104.0 10 5 5 100.0
Ireland 10.9 5.0 5.9 118.0 235 112 123 109.8
Israelb 5.7 8.5 -2.8 -32.7 248 216 32 14.9
Italy 13.2 6.6 6.6 100.0 3 410 1 653 1,757 106.3
Japan 3.5 3.7 -0.2 -5.4 2 340 2 510 -170 -6.8
Korea 3.5 3.1 0.4 12.9 935 760 175 23.1
Luxembourg 6.0 4.2 1.8 42.9 16 9 7 77.8
Mexico 4.7 3.8 0.9 24.4 2 446 1 711 734 42.9
Netherlands 6.5 3.3 3.2 97.0 581 283 298 105.3
New Zealandc 5.4 3.5 1.9 54.3 134 78 56 71.8
Norway 3.7 2.4 1.3 54.2 100 61 39 63.9
Poland 8.3 8.2 0.1 1.2 1 450 1 351 99 7.3
Portugal 13.4 8.8 4.6 52.3 688 479 209 43.6
Slovak Republic 12.9 10.5 2.4 22.9 347 277 70 25.3
Slovenia 8.8 4.7 4.1 87.2 89 48 41 85.4
Spain 24.0 8.8 15.2 172.7 5 509 1 995 3,514 176.1
Sweden 8.1 6.0 2.1 35.0 420 291 129 44.3
Switzerlandc 4.4 3.7 0.8 20.8 209 156 52 33.5
Turkey 10.4 9.0 1.4 15.6 3 000 2 044 956 46.8
United Kingdom 5.9 5.1 0.8 15.7 1 909 1 569 340 21.7
United States 5.8 5.0 0.8 16.0 9 110 7 645 1,465 19.2
Number of unemployed Thousands Unemployment rate
Percentage of the labour force
