German unemployment lowest in 20 years

[xchrom]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0229/breaking14.html

Germany's unemployment held at the lowest in more than two decades in February.

The adjusted jobless rate held at 6.8 per cent from January, the Nuremberg-based Federal Labour Agency said today. That's the lowest since Germany's reunification more than two decades ago.

The number of people out of work remained at 2.87 million after declining 26,000 in the previous month. Economists forecast a drop of 5,000 this month.

"The economy is proving robust come bad weather or turbulence from the debt crisis," said Jens Kramer, an economist at NordLB in Hanover, Germany, who forecast an adjusted drop of 19,000.

"Companies are optimistic when they look ahead and this is playing out in the labour market."

[leveymg]

1. Germany produces (high-quality) manufactured goods, US companies make profits and financial products

Time to fire the One Percent and tax them out of existence.

[JDPriestly]

3. Germany makes high-quality goods

because of its traditions of labor guilds, excellent apprenticeships and education and labor laws that ensure the dignity of working people. Germans have, over the centuries, developed patient, well organized ways of working.

For example, at least as recently as 2008, German stores were/are closed on Sundays.

http://reason.com/archives/2008/10/06/no-shopping-please-were-german

German workers work fewer hours than Americans. That may be one of the reasons for the higher quality of their products: the workers are less tired during their working hours.

We Americans wear ourselves out at work trying to convince our bosses that they shouldn't fire us.

Who knows? Maybe our health would improve if we passed laws that helped Americans relax just a bit about job security and fairness in the workplace. Maybe people would spend more time cooperating and being positive in the workplace if only big bosses like Romney and our schoolboards printed fewer pink slips.

Just thinking.

[leveymg]

4. America is just a large Third World country.

Now we're being restructured like one. This is nothing new -- until the post-war era, we were always a country with a huge number of destitute and working poor. Only during that period after World War Two until Reagan, and then for about five years until the dot-com Bubble burst in 2000, did we have a truly thriving middle-class.

There are no more bubbles to blow up, and you can only cut taxes on the global rich for so long -- multinationals have been handed absolutely no reason to compel them to reinvest in America.

[TheWraith]

18. If you really appreciated the third world, you're never say something like that.

You'd have to look at the poorest and most disadvantaged Americans to find something even remotely close to the way AVERAGE people live in a third world country.

[2ndAmForComputers]

27. The problem is, there's more and more of these Americans each passing day.

[girl gone mad]

30. "the poorest and most disadvantaged Americans"

A segment which now makes up over 15% of the population.

[JDPriestly]

38. I'm increasingly hearing doubts about capitalism as we practice it.

I have never been a socialist, but what we have now is more corporatist than really the kind of small-business capitalism that we believe in.

I try to support the small, locally owned businesses in my part of my city, but they have a tough time.

[JDPriestly]

2. Train people well. Treat people well. That's Germany's secret.

[ParkieDem]

5. I've been impressed by Germany

(well, in the past 20 or so years -- not the 30s or 40s, of course).

Germany, and to a slightly lesser extent the Nordic countries, have really struck what seems to be the "right balance" in a free-market system.

Now, some on the right argue that supply-side reforms are the key behind Germany's recent success - they point to a loosening of labor regulations and the like - but I don't think this is the real cause.

In Sweden, too, some right-wingers point to "conservative" reforms since its mild financial crisis, and I'll admit, some of these reforms have been good. But overall, the key to the success of Northern Europe is its respect for workers, reasonable regulation of the financial industry, and social model. They're doing it better than us, and a hell of a lot better than their neighbors to the South.

[Kwarg]

7. Fyi in the 30's and early 40's...

Germany possessed the worlds finest industrial ability to produce high quality materials.

[Kwarg]

6. There's more to it than that.

If you've studied and traveled Europe, and I have... The Germans, as a whole are more accurate, organized, neater and have a better work ethic than most of their European breathren. However this is not a modern phenomena, theGerman nation has looked like this ever since the Industrial Revolution.

[ParkieDem]

9. Oh, I don't disagree.

I used to live in Germany and I've traveled in Europe pretty extensively. You're no doubt correct, the Germans do, as a whole, possess a work ethic that values productive work vs. leisure very differently from say, the Spanish or Greeks.

What I think is impressive is that such a culture has thrived in such a large, diverse country. One could argue that the policies of Norway, Sweden, etc. work there because of their small, relatively homogeneous society -- but Germany makes it work with a diverse population of 90m+.

Now, this is also the first of 714 arguments against the Euro, but that's another discussion ...

[markpkessinger]

36. I've heard the argument about homogeneity, etc. ...

... but I've never bought it. People make the argument, but I've never heard anyone elucidate exactly how an ethnically diverse population makes it more or less expensive to implement the kinds of worker support programs found in Scandanavian and some other European countries.

[xchrom]

10. you will find a lot of DUers are a well traveled lot -- several are living in europe, the mideast

and asia.

and then we have regular european posters.

[Kwarg]

14. Yeh I love the knowledgeable posts on DU!!

[hughee99]

8. Wow, 6.8 is their lowest in 20 years.

Through 8 years of the * disaster, our unemployment never got that high. It's been above 6.8 for the last 3 years, and to find the last time it was that high, you have to go back to 1993.

[hifiguy]

12. Well, the former West Germans had to integrate

an entire country (the former East Germany) into their system after the Wall came down. And the East German economy was a disaster wrapped in a catastrophe. West German unemployment was always pretty low but the former East was another story.

[JackRiddler]

13. Numbers are not directly comparable.

In its statistics Germany does not exclude long-term unemployed from the work force, as the US does to artifically lower the rate. U3 in the US is at around 17 percent, if I'm not mistaken (the measure that includes long-term unemployed and involuntarily part-time employed). US U1 unemployment would be higher if measured by German methods. Despite this, US defines a larger work force than Germany. So direct comparisons are misleading.

At any rate, go there and you see the vast majority of people including the poor and unemployed live a lot better than they do here, without the same constant anxiety, and with much better working hours and conditions. (German work ethic, sure, but the hours are the best, meaning lowest, in the OECD.)

[hughee99]

17. I didn't realize they didn't use relatively the same f'd up system we do.

Also, forgot about the integration of East Germany, as mentioned above, which began roughly 20 years ago.

I was just thinking to myself when i read this, not long ago, presidents lost their jobs for unemployment above 7, now it's a goal to aspire to. How we have lowered our expectations.

[Kwarg]

15. Remember our figures are the end product

Of numerical torture and twisting so comparing numbers between nations probably isn't instructive.

[hughee99]

16. Fucking with the unemployment numbers isn't the international norm? n/t

[Selatius]

40. That's only normal in countries where corporatism influences all levels of government.

Unlike Germany, the United States' electoral system is basically privately funded elections. This, of course, means the wealthiest interests have an advantage as far as setting economic policy. The Germans have publicly funded elections, and their ballots are cast on paper to ensure proper recounts and verification. The US, on the other hand, uses electronic voting where recounts may or may not be accurate.

[JackRiddler]

11. While agreeing with the gist of the posts praising the German system and culture...

It should be noted this is also thanks to the euro exposing the other EU markets directly to the German manufacturing advantage. It was incredibly reckless for the EU periphery countries to have joined the single currency and thus lost the ability to protect their markets and maintain self-sufficiency and national interest. Reckless for the peoples, but profitable for enough elites that these countries chose a self-destructive path.

It's appalling to see the Germans, who have benefitted from the euro so exorbitantly (among other things it's also kept their products cheaper for non-EU markets), and whose success is not entirely due to work virtues (size certainly makes a difference), now complaining about the costs of maintaining the system that has done so much for their prosperity, and casting aspersions on Greeks, Italians, Spaniards and Irish.

[got root]

22. The aspersions are universal, and just as revolting

[girl gone mad]

32. Thanks for bringing it up.

I admire many aspects of Germany's economy, but they are not competing on a level playing field.

[mathematic]

19. EU Unemployment definition

This post is dedicated to all the US government statistics haters.

EU definition of unemployment:

- aged 15-74 (in ES, SE (1995-2000), UK, IS and NO: 16-74),
- who were without work during the reference week, but currently available for work,
- who were either actively seeking work in the past four weeks or who had already found a job to start within the next three months.

From EU's statistics agency. source

US definition of unemployment:

Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work. Persons who were not working and were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been temporarily laid off are also included as unemployed.

From the BLS. source

Wow! They're almost identical! This is no coincidence. It's the international standard agreed on by the International Labor Organization (a UN org). Nevertheless, there are minor differences in the data collection. BLS usefully keeps track of the adjusted data:
http://www.bls.gov/ilc/intl_unemployment_rates_monthly.htm#Rtable1 .

If anybody's really interested in the nitty-gritty, here's a research report from the BLS that explains the differences and how they are adjusted for. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2000/06/art1full.pdf .

So please, enough of this if-we-calculated-ours-like-they-calculated-theirs-we'd-be-at-1000% nonsense.

[Southerner]

20. I think a nation's culture trumps it's form of government as the predictor of economic success.

Think about how many forms of government Germany has had the past 300 years. They have thrived in all of them.

Let it be a lesson to all nations.

[Nye Bevan]

24. Emulating Germany has not *always* been a good thing to do (nt)

[cthulu2016]

21. Which will, ironically, tear apart the Eurozone

Having a big economy like Germany going strong with a huge trade surplus while everyone else is in a bad economy is half the tension. It is not just that some euro countries are doing poorly, but that they are doing poorly while locked into a currency primarily controlled by an economy that is more concerned about inflation than growth.

[bluestate10]

34. Germany suffered mightily as East Germany was merged with West Germany.

But the country never wavered from the principles that allowed it to rise powerfully from the scurge of nazism.

[cthulu2016]

37. I'm not knocking Germany so much as

knocking the idea of the Euro. With the benefit of hindsight it's looking plain that the nations within the E-zone are too diverse to have a concensus currency.

It turns out that a nation's control of thier sovreign currency is an essential part of their overall ability to manage their economy in any extreme circumstance.

In other words, like so many things the Euro was a great idea as long as nothing bad happened.

[Nye Bevan]

23. Looks like free trade works well for the Germans (nt)

[applegrove]

25. And Germany was the neocon example of a liberal economy destroying itself back during the "W"

presidency.

[Zanzoobar]

26. Germany will pay for its productivity.

And its very poor decisions.

[2ndAmForComputers]

28. Please elaborate.

[Zanzoobar]

31. Do I really need to?

They will regret trying to hold the Euro together. The writing is on the wall. They will pay.

No good deed goes unpunished.

[Avalux]

29. My mother may be right.

She is certain that eventually, Germans will run the world.

[bluestate10]

35. Considering modern Germany and the other choices, that my not be a bad outcome. nt

[Yavin4]

41. That's Why I Am Studying German

I started this month and hope to be fluent in a year or so. My dream is to work for a German company here in America and travel back and forth between the two.

[bluestate10]

33. Shows what happens in a truly advanced society. nt

[Yavin4]

39. Germany Has Very Strong Labor Unions and A Generous Welfare State

Yet, they have the most vibrant and strong economy in all of Europe.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

42. In the 1960's Western Europe confronted a changing world head on

Recognizing that the comparative advantage of the developing world and American economic hegemony was going to thump certain industries hard - so they aggressively retrenched in the industries that could sustain high value employment.

In the US we grew out mullets and rocked out to John Cafferty songs in the empty parking lots of closed factories shaking our fists at the sky. Not much of an industrial policy.