Yes, the oil shocks certainly coincides in time with the unemployment rise in most of western Europe.

In Sweden we had almost full employment and high inflation until 1990. Then we switched to low inflation high unemployment. This can of course be taken as an argument for that inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment theory (someone or another s curve), but my guess is other conclusions can also be drawn. However in the early 90ies in Sweden there was much talk about NAIRU - non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment - suggesting that the rates were set to keep inflation down and thus unemployment up.

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