deja vu... how many of you remember the movie "Minority Report" 3559

On Tue, 29 Nov 2005, alexy

And, with the labor force at (WSJ says) 146 mil, population at, what, 300 +-- mil, you could say ~50-51%. But, even I would say that's an unreasonable figure unless you want to re-define the UE stat. But, some people use the converse, "participation" which would be the 146-300 figure. But, political correctness being what it is, no one wants to see an "employment rate" of about 49% because, just like J.C. Penny psychology which says many more people will buy something at $2.99 than if it were priced at $3.00. And, it always "looks" better to report US unemployment at about half that in Europe. So, so far, I have yet to read any explanation in the WSJ (or anywhere else) if Europe counts its unemployment in any manner comparable to that in the US. Do you know the answer to that, alexy?

Well, my own more serious interest is in the quality of the new jobs that are being created (in terms of pay, job security, fringes, full time vs part time eg. temporary?, and when people get into these new jobs are there greater gaps of unemployment between periods of employment, stuff like that and there are studies out there saying its a mix and other studies saying the net is downhill)

I more or less agree, but the issue I raised above (the quality of the new jobs compared to the old ones particularly in view of the decline of unions, and union-related benefits) seems equally if not more important. Do you have any thoughts on this?