Provided by Forbes, March 2011
The world has been watching and waiting for signs that the economic crisis is coming to an end. Unfortunately it's taking longer in some of the globe's richest and most socioeconomically generous nations. In these places unemployment continues to rise, with no clear signs of leveling off.
Recent data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a wealthy-country think tank, have shown that among the world's 30 richest nations, including the United States, Japan and Germany, it is European countries that have seen unemployment increase the most in the last year.
European officials may be tied up with the debt problems of Greece, but the more widespread and keenly felt problem across certain parts of Europe is that of everyday people having difficulty finding a job. Ireland's unemployment rate worsened the most dramatically over the last year. It stood at 13.8% in January, but that was a whopping 4.4-percentage-point increase from this time last year. Back in 2008 the jobless rate was at just 6.3%.
Second-worst is the Slovak Republic, where the rate of unemployment rose by 4 points to 13.7%. Spain still has the highest unemployment rate out of the advanced world - an eye-wateringly high 18.8% in January - and that's also marked a 3-point increase from January 2009.
Outside Europe
Though most of the countries in the OECD are European, the other nations in the club have fared better when it comes to keeping their jobless rates under control. America's unemployment rate is still at a relatively high 9.7%, but that was a shift up of a fair 3 percentage points from the year before. In Japan the unemployment rate has risen by just 0.7 points to 4.9%, according to OECD data.
This is just a continuation of a trend that started with the credit crisis in 2008. Between that year and 2009, the biggest jumps in unemployment by region took place in the European Union and developed economies, where the overall jobless rate increased by 2.3 percentage points, according to the International Labor Organization.
While things leveled off in America and Japan, the outlook remains grim for Europe. Economic sentiment in the region has been improving in the last 10 months, according to the European Commission, but that rebound has already lost some of its momentum. "The E.U. economy is still facing headwinds, and the outlook for the labor market remains unfavorable for 2010," the commission said in its latest monthly report on the region's employment situation.
This shouldn't be surprising considering that the American economy contracted by 2.7% in 2009, while the European Union's contracted by more than 4.1% last year, according to the International Monetary Fund. The sharpest declines took place in the emerging-market nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, none of which are members of the OECD.
Real Estate Bust
In developed Europe, the countries hardest hit are those that went through the boom and bust of a rapidly growing construction sector and soaring property prices. Ireland, once hailed as the Celtic Tiger, now has one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe after thousands of construction workers - many of whom were on temporary contracts - lost their jobs and struggled to find work in other sectors.
Ireland's GDP plunged by 7.5% in 2009 and is expected to fall by another 1% this year, according to the country's Investment and Development Agency. The national economy is also heavily dependent on trade - with exports representing 90% of GDP - so the slow recovery in world trade is exacerbating the country's problems.
In contrast Germany has managed to keep unemployment in check because its companies, many of them involved in engineering or high-tech manufacturing, employ highly skilled individuals who are difficult to replace. Instead of firing workers, German companies try to shorten their hours; the government has a short-term plan of subsidizing wages where hours have been reduced. Thanks to government spending, Germany has had one of the lowest increases in unemployment in the last year: Its 0.3-point increase is on par with Norway and Australia.
Denmark, Turkey, Iceland and Spain are a few other rich countries that have seen big jumps in unemployment in the last year. While Spain and Iceland have suffered from construction and financial bubbles, the labor market troubles of Denmark are curious: The Danes have a relatively low unemployment rate of 7.3% and rank enviably high in terms of their standard of living.
Yet Denmark was the first country in Europe to dip into recession, thanks to a domestic property bust. And Nevlia Konika, an economist with IHS Global Insight, points out that the Danish labor market is actually weakening as wages in the country grow, making its exports and services less competitive.
This could be a growing problem. While emerging nations like China and Brazil make a speedy recovery from their recessions and traditional powerhouses Switzerland and Japan get back on their feet, some of Europe's largest economies are struggling to get their labor markets on track.
Even Germany may see its hefty government spending result in a bigger deficit that hits the job market down the line. Economists at Deutsche Bank expect the jobless rate in Germany to rise to 9.5% in 2011.
When it comes go jobs, Europe's troubles are far from over.
