Being employed is something objective... teh question is how we measure it.a. nd how e compare..
I mean.. if we agree ona definition it should be clear hat the number is...
the problem as always.. is how do you count those that do not fit your image... numbers would be ok but interpretations not...
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
Having a 20 hour/week job spread over two mornings and two evenings in the week is a "job", but the quality of life that goes with it can be quite varied.
Having benefits or not can change the picture.
Needing to pay for childcare or not changes the picture too.
... and so on. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
But I would be ahppy enough if at least the raw data would be unbiased.
The best way to have an accurate measure of the employment rate would be to calculate it in full-time equivalent jobs. "Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char
The whole debate about employment is tied up with different framings. The standard framing is that low numbers of people working is a bad thing because it means that the economic resources of the country are being under-utilised. From the point of view of individuals the picture is very different.
Second measuring the hours worked is tricky, because not all the real hours worked are recorded and overtime is not taken into account in some countries.
And only the hours worked per year make sense, because you have a wide spectrum of working time schemes, some of them making people work 50 hours a week in summer and 20 in winter, or any other combination (and, believe me, there are many of them!). "Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char
From the plutocratic point of view the useful measures are:
The irony is that disposable income and leisure time are two of the biggest drivers of individual spending, and an economy which is strong in both has a good chance of being strong in more traditional ways.
But it's long and I haven't found the table you mention.
And I also don't think there's a final word on annual hours worked. And wouldn't trust that report to deliver it, anyway. When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
Mostly it looks solid enough. It shows, however, 100 more hours a year per employee worked in the UK than in France. The justification for this is in Item 4, where about a hundred hours difference is made on the basis of RTT (Work Time Reduction in which employees catch up on extra time done in other weeks or periods).
The footnote to this says the European Union Labour Force Survey data understated RTT and were corrected. (No further explanation).
Sources are cited as (mostly) EULFS and calculations by the authors. The latter obviously refers to the RTT hours, but no calculations are offered.
In this way the report avoids the conclusion that annual work hours in France and the UK are roughly similar. When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
Swing weekends, and I only got two days off in a row twice a month, which all compounds to make you feel as though you never leave work. To top it off, they made us work holidays, incuding Christmas.
I don't think that the extent to which the "flexibility" that creative scheduling gives employers power over their workers lives far in excess of anything appropriate in a democracy is fully understood unless you've lived it. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
a) You go slowly mad. b) It's virtually impossible to take care of "normal life" beyond the basics. You end up with "no life outside of work."
Also 'proper' temping removes people from the unemployment registers but much of the time can't be counted as a 'proper' job.
Although economically the concept of unemployment misses the point. Many people with full time jobs are unproductive time-servers who are effectively on corporate benefits - they turn up, write a few emails, sit in a few meetings, but wouldn't really be missed if they disappeared.
E.g. I can think of one company which makes 3D modelling and animation software. Every year or so they send me an update for review, which comes with:
A shiny presentation gimmick A big pack full of paper in plastic binders, most of which no one reads Special preview CD-Rs with pre-release software
The PR company that handles their account puts all of these packs together by hand. The preview copies always appear at least four weeks after they say they will. And the preview registration process never works.
So... I always download a cracked copy from the filesharing networks - the finished product is always available there, even if the PR people don't have it - and use that to write the review.
So what are these people for, exactly? They're contributing to GDP, but they're not doing anything that's any practical use to anyone.
Other people are frantically overemployed, doing the work of two or more people and putting in very long hours.
And there's also corporate puritanism which assumes that if you're not in the office for ten hours a day you're not pulling your weight, no matter how much of a contribution you actually make.
Even when people are being productive, it's often toxic productivity - selling more useless crap to people who don't need it and can't afford it.
The tyrannosaurus on the table is the fact that the concept of work is broken. The idea of working a set routine is madness. Many of the jobs people do are madness. Many of them would be happier and more productive doing other things.
But it's taboo to even suggest a restructuring which might free up some time outside of 'economic productivity' and also give people a chance to contribute in more spontaneous, self-directed and useful ways.
