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KILM 8. Unemployment
Introduction
The unemployment rate is probably the best-known labour market measure and certainly one of the most widely quoted by the media in many economies. Together with the employment-to-population ratio (KILM 2), it provides the broadest indicator of the labour market situation in economies that collect information on the labour force. The unemployment rate is available for a total of 137 economies in table 8a. Information on the number of unemployed persons is available for an additional 27 economies, but the lack of statistics on total employment prevents the calculation of the unemployment rate for them. Table 8b - ILO-comparable unemployment rates - presents unemployment rates from labour force surveys that have been adjusted to make the estimates conceptually consistent with the strictest application of the ILO statistical standards. Comparable data are available for 24 economies.
Trends
Figure 8a. Total unemployment rates,latest years
Seven economies had unemployment rates in excess of 20 per cent in the latest year for which data are available: Algeria, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Morocco, Namibia, Réunion, Serbia and Montenegro, and West Bank and Gaza Strip. There is no strong regional pattern concerning unemployment. With the exception of sub-Saharan Africa, for which few data are available, all regions are represented in the lowest grouping, with less than 5 per cent unemployment. The higher unemployment bands, however, seem to have a greater concentration of transition economies and economies in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Figure 8b. Percentage change in total unemployment rates, latest five years (after 1994)
It is interesting to see how unemployment rates have moved since 1995. In economies with four or five years of data since 1995, the split is 50-50; half of the economies saw an increase in their unemployment rate over the period and half reported a decrease. Four economies (Hong Kong-China, Macau-China, the Republic of Moldova and Thailand) saw their unemployment rates increase by more than 50 per cent, while unemployment decreased dramatically - by 50 per cent or more - in ten economies (rates were more than halved in Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden). It would be interesting to review which States apply active labour market adjustment policies to see to what extent government economic policy influences the movement of unemployment.
Figure 8c. ILO-comparable unemployment rates for males and females, 1990 and 2001
To avoid the limitations of comparability that apply to statistics based on national estimates, one can make cross-country comparisons based on the series of ILO-comparable unemployment rates. The comparable series shows that both male and female unemployment rates increased between 1990 and 2000 in Finland, Germany, Japan and Sweden, whereas rates decreased for both sexes in Australia, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain and the United States. The variations were small over the period in Australia, Canada and the United States, but more dramatic elsewhere. Ireland, for example, showed a decrease in unemployment of 9 percentage points for males and 10 points for females between 1990 and 2001. The largest increase was 5 percentage points for males and 7 points for females in Finland.
