That´s exactly my point! Obviously France, Germany etc. have an unemployment problem. I´m simply saying that countries like the UK and the USA, our "examples" according to the "FT", "The Economist" etc. have the exact same problem too.

The UK apparently masks it with "sickness/disability" benefits. The USA partly hides it with their prison population and the size of their armed forces. Not to mention the fact that European welfare states will support you much longer than any US program. You just have to register (as unemployed) for it.

And just to mention it.

There was an article in the NYT Germany's Export-Led Economy Finds Global Niche about the new "German economic wonder" on April 13, 2007. Curiously enough, that article mentioned an unemployment rate of 9.8% in their article. The author however didn´t mention at all that he used "German national" unemployment rates instead of the more comparable ILO unemployment rates.

Of course I complained to him.
Guess what he wrote back?

I used the German unemployment figure because that's what drives the perception of Germany's economic health within the country. The fact that it recently fell below double digits was greeted as a minor milestone.

Not even mentioning the fact that he was primarily writing for an American newspaper. How many Germans read the NYT? Why use a German number while writing for a primarily American newspaper?

But you are right that I should have included a brief explanation of the differences in definition, and perhaps cited the ILO/OECD number as well. I've done this in other stories when I've compared German unemployment to that in other countries. In those cases, I've used the ILO number for an apples-to-apples comparison.

He should have. I fail to see however why use of ILO numbers in former stories excuse him. Unless he expects that NYT readers are a static mass, reading every single story the NYT produces for months on end.