Job Market Monitor
Michel Cournoyer
Harmonised Unemployment Rates stable at 8.2% in March for OECD
The OECD area unemployment rate was stable at 8.2% in March 2012, the same level recorded since February 2011. This flatness is largely the result of increasing rates in some euro area countries being offset by declines in North America. The euro area unemployment rate rose by 0.1 percentage point to 10.9% in March, 3.6 … Continue reading
Canada | Best two-month employment gain in three decades
Employment increased by 58,000 in April, mostly in full-time work. This was the second consecutive month of notable gains after four months of little change. With more people searching for work, the unemployment rate increased by 0.1 percentage points to 7.3%. Compared with 12 months earlier, employment was up 1.2% or 214,000. All of the growth over the 12 months was in full-time work, up 217,000 (+1.6%), while … Continue reading
Free Online Unemployment Search Organizer
One of the requirements for those collecting unemployment benefits is keeping track of your work search. That’s not always easy. A recent StartWire survey of 25,000 unemployed workers reports that: 25% of job seekers had their work search records audited by state unemployment agencies Of those that failed to provide documentation, 75% had to re-pay … Continue reading
Looking for work abroad | Only money and lack of skills stand in the way
Three out of five employees in the UK (60%) want to change their job, but are being held back by a lack of finances(46%) and not having the right skills (42%), according to new a poll of 3,000 people by Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. The research was conducted to examine what Brits really want to … Continue reading
Eurozone economy to shrink in 2012 dragged down by Greece, Spain, Italy …
The eurozone economy is forecast to shrink this year as its debt crisis continues to bite. The European Commission’s spring forecast confirmed its prediction of a 0.3% contraction in 2012 in the economies of the 17 countries that use the euro. It predicted growth of 1.0% for the eurozone in 2013. European Commissioner for Economic … Continue reading
200,000 Long-Term Jobless Americans lose unemployment benefits
More than 200,000 long-term jobless Americans will lose their unemployment checks this week, when eight states roll off the federal extended benefits program. Nearly half of them live in California, and the rest reside in Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Colorado, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Texas. The federal extended benefits program has provided the jobless with up … Continue reading
Structural Unemeployment | In the long run we are all dead and in the short run, there is a lot of pain
Krugman: So now we’re in another depression, not as bad as the last one, but bad enough. And, once again, authoritative-sounding figures insist that our problems are “structural,” that they can’t be fixed quickly. We must focus on the long run, such people say, believing that they are being responsible. But the reality is that … Continue reading
Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report : An insignificant drop but might indicate a return to a declining trend
SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA In the week ending May 5, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 367,000, a decrease of 1,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 368,000. The 4-week moving average was 379,000, a decrease of 5,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 384,250. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment … Continue reading
India | SKS to cut 1,200 jobs
SKS Microfinance Ltd(SKSM.NS), the only listed microfinance company in India, said on Thursday it planned to reduce its headcount by a third and shut some branches in Andhra Pradesh state amid mounting losses. SKS’ business in Andhra Pradesh, which was a microfinance hub earlier, has been hit after the state government imposed a set of … Continue reading
U.S. | Rising innequalities in the United States was a root cause of the financial crisis
As noted by The Economist, “[s]everal prominent economists now reckon that inequality was a root cause of the financial crisis.” Indeed, in recent years there has been a proliferation of analyses supporting this view writes Till van Treeck in Did inequality cause the U.S. financial crisis? published on boeckler.de. The explanation is straightforward: As the benefits of rising … Continue reading
Australia | Unemployment rate at 4.9% : 12-month low as people stop looking for a job
TREND ESTIMATES (MONTHLY CHANGE) Employment increased to 11,484,200. Unemployment decreased to 614,200. Unemployment rate steady at 5.1% from a revised March 2012 rate. Participation rate steady at 65.2% from a revised March 2012 rate. Aggregate monthly hours worked increased to 1,624.1 million hours. SEASONALLY ADJUSTED ESTIMATES (MONTHLY CHANGE) Employment increased 15,500 (0.1%) to 11,501,000. Full-time … Continue reading
Shadow economies | A declining trend over time with and a spike staring in 2007
Shadow economies – sometimes called the black market or informal economy – exist in every country. But how big are they? This column presents some new approaches to estimating their size and uses them to compare shadow economies across rich and poor countries over the last 60 years write Ceyhun Elgin and Oguz Oztunali on Vox. … Continue reading
Industrial countries can act as if all is well or treat the crisis as a wake-up call
In August 2005, Raghuram Rajan, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, predicted the financial crisis. And he did it at possibly the least friendly of venues: a conference of high-powered economists who had convened in part to honor Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Rajan presented a paper titled “Has Financial … Continue reading
The overlapping structural problems
There are several overlapping structural problems writes David Brooks on NYTimes.com. The country is divided when different people take different sides in a debate. The country is really divided when different people are having entirely different debates. That’s what’s happening on economic policy. Many people on the left are having a one-sided debate about how to deal … Continue reading
Focus on jobs, not the budget deficit says Krugman
Paul Krugman has a simple message for U.S. policymakers: Forget about the country’s huge budget deficit. It can be fixed over the next decade. Focus instead on the much more immediate problem of mass unemployment. “It’s not true we’re going over a cliff on fiscal problems,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist said in an interview with … Continue reading
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