I’m unemployed, but at least I’m in France
It’s not just pop music and military efforts that the French have fumbled. They’ve also fumbled their own economy by refusing to acknowledge that the best way to encourage economic growth is to allow the dreaded invisible hand to move from Britain and Ireland over to France. Loosening their grip on labor would be a good place to start. France’s unemployment rate sits at a staggering 10.2%. It has not dropped below 8% in more than 20 years. To make things worse, the labor force in France is remarkably static–a tremendous percentage of those who are unemployed in
It would be more fun if the unemployment problem were attributable solely to Jacque Chirac–but it’s not all his fault. In fact, Chirac has tried to address the problem by seeking pro-market solutions, only to succumb to populist opposition a short while later. The French remain steadfastly loyal to Keynesian ideals and pay dearly for their refusal to decrease the cost of labor, or to dump strict employment laws that make it inordinately difficult for floundering businesses to lay off workers.
In contrast,
Following the failure of the EU referendum in
The Prime Minister has promised to cut unemployment by 10%. Unless de Villepin intends to drop the unemployment rate itself by 10%–an impossible scenario–he has set his standards awfully low. Even if his promise is fulfilled it would leave the French with an unemployment rate above 9% (compared to a rate of 6.6% for the OECD area). A labor force that loves long vacations and 35 hour work weeks may be able to cut unemployment by 10%, but without reform it’s unlikely to cause the “action” needed to generate real job growth.
9 Responses to “I’m unemployed, but at least I’m in France”
Maybe France should have more Wal-Marts. Those Wal-Marts would, of course have more greeters, thereby increasing the employment rate.
Just like in the US.
/sarcasm
I imagine that 40% unemployment rate is measured rather differently than America’s. I could be wrong, but something tells me they don’t go through contorted definitions of “unemployment” there. Ours would be much closer if we were honest (and we’d have to balance the untter instability of life as an employee in the U.S. with the higher “unemployment” rates in France.
Unemployment rates between countries are incomparable for the reason put forward by Phil, namely the methodology with coming up with a number representing the unemployment rate differs from country to country.
Even within a country, the numbers differ. In our country, using the BLS’ household figure (which yielded 140 million employed in the first quarter of 2005), unemployment is around 5% (the officially reported number).
If the BLS were to use instead of its household figure (which showed 133 million employed in the first quarter of 2005), its employer figure, our official unemployment rate would be 10%.
I return you to your regularly-scheduled ugly americanism,
greg
I imagine that 40% unemployment rate is measured rather differently than America’s.
It’s not a 40% unemployment rate. It’s a 10.2% unemployment rate, of which 40% (i.e. 4% of the total workforce) has been unemployed for longer than a year.
And you can quibble about the methodologies to obtain these data, but I don’t think there’s any doubt that unemployment is a bigger problem in France than in the US or the UK.
Eric, can you cite a piece of data for me about how many in the U.S. have been unemployed for more than a year?
I certainly think there is a doubt. Again, if the BLS were to use its own employer survey, which every economist from Alan Greenspan on down says is the more accurate than the household survey, as the basis for the US unemployment rate then our official unemployment rate would be 10% — the same as France’s.
Then, of course, is the question of whether one would rather be an unemployed Frenchman or American. I’ll start and end with the French medical system, a system which even the Economist magazine touts as the best in the world:
Its hospitals gleam. Waiting-lists are non-existent. Doctors still make home visits. Life expectancy is two years longer than average for the western world.
….For the patient, the French health system is still a joy. Same-day appointments can be made easily; if one doctor’s advice displeases, you can consult another, a habit known as nomadisme médical. Individual hospital rooms are the norm. Specialists can be consulted without referral. And while the patient pays up front, almost all the money is reimbursed, either through the public insurance system or a top-up private policy.
For family doctors too, liberty prevails. They are self-employed, can set up a practice where they like, prescribe what they like, and are paid per consultation. As the health ministry’s own diagnosis put it recently: “The French system offers more freedom than any other in the world.”
The Economist, on French healthcare 5/13/2004
And, yes, frankly their culture takes us out behind the woodshed and bitch-slaps it back to the suburban hellhole from which it came.
greg
if the BLS were to use its own employer survey…then our official unemployment rate would be 10% — the same as France’s.
Assuming that France’s 10% figure doesn’t come from a household survey similar to ours.
The CIA World Fact Book lists US unemployment in 2004 as 5.5%, and France’s as 10.1%. The United Nations lists similar figures. This analysis by three French economists takes the difference in employment as a given and seeks to understand the possible causes for it.
To doubt that French unemployment is significantly higher than US unemployment is to believe a highly improbable scenario because it fits your ideological leanings better. Which is probably nothing new for you, of course…
I’m not sure what the personal attacks bring to the discussion (am I really the only one who argues from his own “ideological leanings?” I don’t think so).
That said, the point isn’t that France doesn’t have a higher official unemployment rate — it obviously does as each of the CIA factbook and the UN simply report what is reported to them, namely the official unemployment rate as reported by the reporting countries.
In this sense, neither France’s nor the US’ unemployment rate is much different than, say, Saudi Arabia’s reported remaining petroleum reserves (also parroted in the CIA factbook). Official figures, not to be confused with reality.
Is France’s real unemployment rate higher than that of the US? Almost certainly. Is the US’ real unemployment rate 5%? Almost certainly not (how can an unemployment rate remain static when, for five years, more working-age population has been added than has been added actual jobs?).
Is France’s unemployment rate qualitatively comparable to the US’? I don’t think so. The labor markets and social circumstances between the two countries are vastly different. France has a social welfare and health system that makes ours look like Liberia. French workers (those few who do), work 300 hours a year less than US workers do.
Can it be determined that the economic situation in France worse than that in the United States solely based on each country’s “official” unemployment rate? Only a fool would assert such.
greg
Having spent a few days in France I can guarantee you the country is in big trouble. Nobody to help you in airports or elsewhere, incompetent employees, travel agents that close for 3 hours duting the day during the summer, queues for everything- it’s more like the old Soviet Union.