There’s a lot of commentary wandering around as it’s revealed Greek youth are 6x more likely to be unemployed (using ILO measures) than those in Germany. The truly staggering gap in unemployment rates is remarkable (particularly since Germany has been implementing government subsidization of employment through their kurzarbeit while demanding “sacrifices” from other EU states), but so is another stat.
Specifically earnings gaps. Greece has tried to entice youth hiring by slashing the required minimum wage per month to a mere 500 euros/month. (This works out to 2.9 euros/hour based on how Eurostat calculates statutory minimum wages.) and you still see unemployment rates of about a quarter of its population out of work and over 60% of its youth population. By contrast in Germany (a country without a statutory minimum wage, but a complex “fair wage” system) only about 1.2 million people in the entire country make less than 5 euros per hour (out of a labor force of 42 million).
This is just getting uglier and uglier.
using ILO measures
I wouldn’t be surprised if the *REAL* unemployment numbers are within a stone’s throw of each other if one takes the black/grey markets into account.Report
ILO, Eurostat, take your pick, and the unemployment numbers are still extremely disparate and scarily out of whack and proportion.
I’m really doubting that even taking black markets and barter exchanges into account would do anything to make these numbers look any better.Report
So, whither the Gap?Report
Oh dear lord.
No.
I was going to play on to the whole rise of fascism thing, but the Gap?! That’s just inhumane to even consider.Report
Sorry unintended pun. I meant to seriously ask what your take was on why there is an unemployment gap between greece and germany.Report
I think it’s two fold.
First – monetary policy conducted by the ECB which targets interest rates in line with inflation hawk expectations have mostly helped Germany (which has a strong export oriented economy) maintain its competitive edge within the Eurozone for manufacturing and preventing monetary devaluations from struggling economies as a means of offsetting the cyclical effects of a downturn. This is exacerbated by the fact that many of the countries badly hit by this monetary policy preferential treatment tend to be more service oriented, tourism or agricultural economies whose main products tend to go down in demand during downturns and as a consequence often try to use devaluation as a means of making them more attractive to foreign visitors.
Second – there’s an element of serious bugger thy neighbor (yes, not a typo) policy going on here, in that Germany is very clearly taking counter-cyclical measures like Kuzarbeit to cushion the blows from the downturn while demanding loudly and publicly and rather self-righteously that everyone else cut down on their structural deficits and implement rather severe austerity plans.
Look when the freaking IMF thinks your austerity policies are a bad idea, you’ve gone completely into bizarroworld.Report
That would be “whence.” “Whence” means “from what place,” and “whither” means “to what place.”Report
you might want to consider a few things:
– As opposed to Greece, Germany still has a somewhat functioning economy and a public sector.
– The unemployment statistics in Germany are heavily manipulated. They don’t count a lot of actually unemployed folks as “officially unemployed”. If you’ve been sent to some extra training, are too old, too young, unemployed for a certain time already, etcpp.
– There are a number of measures in place to force people into badly paid and often outright exploitive jobs. Jobs that, despite being full-time, don’t earn a living wage and thus qualify for extra money from the state.Report