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Unemployment Rates

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  • 03-09-2008 8:46pm
    #1
    Andy Rivers
    Registered Users Posts: 46 ✭


    Hi all,

    Just took a quick look at the EuroStat report - http://tinyurl.com/5humos - Noticed that the lowest unemployment rates were registered in The Netherlands - 2.6% and Denmark - 2.3%. What are these countries doing to achieve such low figures? How does the Social Welfare Systems of these countries work against ours?

    Any thoughts?

    Andy


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    #2
    katnip
    Closed Accounts Posts: 28 ✭katnip


    I can only speak for Denmark, but in short they pay sky-high taxes and the government looks after them. The system actually pays Danes subsidies to cover them in university, because they see it as an investment in their future workforce.

    The latest figures showed about 40,000 unemployed in a country the same size as Ireland and they expect the figure to drop further despite the recession.

    They push for back to work schemes and re-education courses over here, which means these people are not counted as unemployed. If you go on the equivialant of the dole, you must apply for at least four jobs a week, and if you don't land one within a reasonable time, they'll cut you off.

    Then the jobs that are available tend to be taken up by the local population because there is an extremely tough immigration policy. You can only get into the country (usually) if you're qualified for one of the 'wanted professions' where they lack the workforce. Although the whole Mattock EU ruling is threatening to blow that wide open....


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    #3
    nesf
    Registered Users Posts: 27,645 ✭✭✭✭nesf


    The thing is whether a person being paid to go to back to education is any different to a person being paid the dole in terms of the number of jobs in an economy. In both cases neither are employed but you can hide a higher unemployment rate by coaxing people into education or other schemes so the headline rate of unemployment is low.

    The raw unemployment rate can be very misleading when comparing countries with very different welfare states.


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