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The EU may be "dormant" politically, but Newsweek recently reported that:

Europe continues to grow faster, and create more jobs, than America.

<...>

Just six years ago, 81 percent of America's population was actively engaged in the work force, compared with 76 percent of Europe's. Now that gap is down to 1 percent. In other words, around 80 percent of both American and European 25- to 54-year-olds are gainfully employed. Says John Schmitt, senior economist at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research: "The argument is that European countries should be basket cases [when it comes to creating jobs], but they're actually doing better than us."

The article notes some downsides:

Of course, not everything is looking up in Western Europe either. Some countries are still unable to supply enough jobs to keep pace with the even faster growth of the population, as a result of unprecedented levels of immigration from Eastern and Central Europe. In Britain, unemployment hit a seven-year high last month even as the total number of people with jobs--31 million--hit an all-time high. The apparent contradiction is due largely to the fact that Britain is coping with its biggest influx of foreign workers to date--1.5 million last year, equivalent to 5.4 percent of the employed population.

But the article is mainly full of upsides.

In particular:

- Today, the three prime industries driving Europe's jobs engine are software, life sciences (like hospital systems) and alternative energy technology. [i.e. industries of the future]

- The European Commission expects the upward trend to continue. Last week, EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia predicted that the EU would create 7 million new jobs by 2008.

Germany's manufacturing industry, packed with highly skilled engineers, is thriving in everything from cars to microchips. Unemployment there dipped below the psychologically significant 10 percent mark for the first time in four years last month.

- In Spain--where unemployment fell to its lowest level since 1979 in the third quarter of this year--construction companies building up the coasts are doing so well that they now account for 12 percent of the economy.

So, economically, it doesn't seem to me that Europe is on an "extended vacation".

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

by marco (cowannar at gmail punkt com) on Mon Nov 20th, 2006 at 02:00:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I'm rather pleased to find that everyone I've met here in Britain refuses to fall into the xenophobic trap regarding jobs.  (Some of this, granted, is based on the fact that most of the people I hang around are economists, but the working- and middle-class people I meet and speak to in the pubs generally don't seem to be angry either.)  It will take some time for the economy to adjust to a larger labor pool than was originally anticipated, but the end result will be good.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Mon Nov 20th, 2006 at 03:11:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I suspect reading the press is becoming a less and less reliable way to know about the world.

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Nov 20th, 2006 at 03:26:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]
It certainly is after November 7th.  "The race is tightening!"  (Actually, the gap was widening as the anchors and reporters were spitting out that nonsense.)

The problem, in the UK (like the US and perhaps everywhere else), is that you have papers like the Daily Mail that enjoy much higher circulation than real newspaper like the FT and the Guardian, and so they are naturally seen more as the "voice of the people," even though only a small fraction of Britons actually read them.  It's the same story with FauxNews.  At the maximum, two million people might watch Fox on a given half-hour time slot.  But we already know those people are insane, and they didn't matter, since they were, at most, 1/35th of the mid-term electorate.  They'd never vote our way, anyway.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin

by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Mon Nov 20th, 2006 at 03:36:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]
In Spain--where unemployment fell to its lowest level since 1979 in the third quarter of this year--construction companies building up the coasts are doing so well that they now account for 12 percent of the economy.
The overdevelopment of the seaside is an upside?

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Nov 20th, 2006 at 03:21:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Ha.  Come to South Florida sometime.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Mon Nov 20th, 2006 at 03:37:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Spain and Florida as retirement havens -- something in common there.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Nov 20th, 2006 at 08:34:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Can't speak for that, but

unemployment fell to its lowest level since 1979 in the third quarter of this year

strikes me as an upside.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

by marco (cowannar at gmail punkt com) on Mon Nov 20th, 2006 at 03:40:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Spain's construction industry is "doing so well" that it has made Spain a poster boy for local government corruption, to the point that when Putin got into a spat with Borrell at the "informal EU summit" a few weeks ago he used it as an example of why the EU couldn't lecture Russia on corruption.

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Nov 20th, 2006 at 03:46:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Not to deny a problem, but you rightly pointed out then that we knew about corruption in Spain because people were actually being put to jail for it - something that rather contradicted the "we're no worse than you wrt rule of law" point that Putin was pretending to make.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Mon Nov 20th, 2006 at 04:06:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]
People are being put into jail for corruption in Russia, it's just that WSJ and FT don't write about it. Perseptions, perseptions...
by Sargon on Mon Nov 20th, 2006 at 12:19:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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