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Originally Posted by nito
Incorrect. The Office for National Statistics (like Eurostat and many other countries and authorities) uses the International Labour Organisation (a UN agency) definition of unemployment.
As per ILO guidelines, people that are studying, suffer a disability/condition, or look after their children/relatives are classified as being economically inactive and are subsequently not included in unemployment figures because they are out of the labour market.
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Do you realize the loop in your reasoning?
If people are artificially declared as incapacitated, obviously they will not appear in the unemployment figures, and that will respect the ILO definition of unemployment.
What's specific about the UK is the Conservative and Labour administrations have put MANY (between 1 and 2 million) people in the incapacitated category. Those same people in Germany or France would NOT be considered incapacitated.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nito
According to Eurostat, not only does France have a higher unemployment rate and lower employment rate compared to the UK, but as per Q1 2014 figures, the ‘active’ population of France stood at 28.31mn, below the 31.29mn figure for the UK despite the smaller total population.
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France has a higher employment rate than the UK in the 25-54 age bracket. More young people in France pursue higher education than in the UK, so the employment rate of the under 25 is meaningless. And people in France retire early, with lots of people going on pre-retirement after 54, so again not comparable to the UK. It's the 25-54 age bracket that matters.
As for the total active population, what's surprising? The UK has a very lax immigration policy, with a net migration of +200,000 every year, when France has strict immigration policies and a net migration of only +50,000 per year. It's thus not surprising that the UK has more active people (France has more toddlers and children than the UK, whereas the UK has more people from 25 to 50 than France, due to high net migration). What's surprising is that with a larger active population, the UK doesn't manage to have a larger economy than France.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nito
The present narrative is of two completely divergent economies and unless there is a yet-to-materialise seismic economic shift the UK will conceivably overtake the French economy before the end of the decade:
- the UK has been experiencing multiple quarters of strong growth, massive reductions in unemployment and exceptionally strong confidence levels amongst consumers and businesses, etc…
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Yeah, yeah. I heard that in 2007 already. We know what happened next.