Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
It's the same fight | 94 comments (94 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Are you even reading what I write? (none / 0)
But the method of counting full time students as unemployed seems very illogical to me.
Full-time students are counted as inactive (i.e., outside the labour market), not as unemployed. The unemployment rate is usually taken as a fraction of the active (having/seeking employment) population, not of the total population. The problem with youth labour statistics is that between, say, age 14 and age 30, a substantial fraction of the population is in education.

Check out the very nice chart put together by Alexandra here.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Mar 20th, 2006 at 04:37:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Are you even reading what I write? (none / 0)
thanks for that clarification, Migeru.  Alexandra's chart makes a lot of sense.  I think this one posted by Jerome confused me a little, coupled with a comment that Jerome made somewhere that said youth unemployment is only 8% in France (perhaps I don't remember that comment correctly).  

It's one thing when you see all these numbers in one diary, and can reconcile the differences between them.  But when they come out over the course of weeks or months, and one relies on memory, and can't reconcile,,,,it's just confusing.

I guess I'm still confused with my memory of Jerome's comment, which I think was youth unemployment in France is only 8%, about the same as the UK.  (I'm not asking you to reconcile,,,,I should take the time and dig back through the data myself).  but thanks for your reference.

by wchurchill on Mon Mar 20th, 2006 at 12:06:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Are you even reading what I write? (none / 1)
The above sounds as if you still don't get it. Jérôme's claim is that unemployed youth are only 8% in France, about the same as the UK, as a percentage of the whole age group.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Mon Mar 20th, 2006 at 12:29:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Are you even reading what I write? (none / 0)
It's because Jerome's chart is the unemployment rate of active youth (again, students are excluded from the calculation).

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Mar 20th, 2006 at 12:33:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Are you even reading what I write? (none / 1)
wchurchill lets see if I can help clarify using the US numbers I posted below:

In 2005 in the USA the total civilian noninstitutional population ages 16-24 was 36,674,000. It's the total of all youth in the labor force 22,291,000 (Employed 19,770,000 + Unemployed and looking for work 2,521,000) + those Not in labor force 14,383,000 (most of whom are in school or, in the case of the older ones, doing unpaid work like caring for their children).

When you talk of employment and unemployment there are two ways of looking at the numbers:
1) As a percentage of all youth age 16-24
employed = (19,770,000 / 36,674,000)*100 = 53.9%
unemployment = (2,521,000 / 36,674,000)*100 = 6.9%
2) As a percentage of youth in the labor force (those that are employed and those unemployed and looking for work)
employed = (19,770,000 / 22,291,000)*100 = 88.7%
unemployment = (2,521,000 / 22,291,000)*100 = 11.3%

When you see the 88.7% employed number it makes it a little easier to understand that we're only talking about a portion of youth not all youth whereas the 11.3% unemployed can more easily be confused.

In labor economics the two numbers that are usually used  to talk about unemployment are the labor force participation rate (the percentage of all youth who are in the labor force - in the example above (22,291,000 / 36,674,000)*100=60.8%) and the unemployment rate as a percentage of the labor force (11.3% in my example). The first number tells you how much or little the second number tell you about the population as a whole. If you don't have both of these numbers then I would argue it's best to look at unemployment as a percentage of total population.

These numbers come from the US Dept of Labor 2005 annual statistics

I hope this helps...

by Alexandra in WMass (alexandra_wmass[a|t]yahoo[d|o|t]fr) on Mon Mar 20th, 2006 at 04:07:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]

It's the same fight | 94 comments (94 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
Display: