Unemployment Definition and Baker latest paper

[Laurent GUERBY <laurent@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Baker & al paper "Are Protective Labor Market Institutions at the Root
of Unemployment? A Critical Review of the Evidence" page 5 (1) cites
OECD unemployment rate by sex and age: for example for male 25-54 the
unemployment rate is 4.6% in the USA and 7.4% in France. The paper then
continue using the employment measure without any further questioning of
what the unemployment number means.

If one digs a bit more into OECD data, for the exact same sex/age group
male 25-54 the employment to population ratio is 86.3% in the USA
and ... 86.7% in France.

So the unemployment rate for this population is shown to be 60% HIGHER
in France than the USA, yet MORE members of the population in question
do have a job in France than in the USA (with similar part-time job
rates).

This puzzle was shown to Baker in january 2007 (2) and inserted into
french and english wikipedia (3) - where it is still present after many
edits.

Raymond Torres, Head of the Employment Analysis and Policy Division,
OECD, said to Le Monde (french newspaper) in may 2007 that "unemployment
was a less and less relevant indicator to judge the job market
efficiency" (4).

Yet, as shown in the Baker paper, even economists who challenge the
orthodoxy do not mention this piece of data when doing cross country
so called "unemployment" surveys.

Are there authors who have a beginning of explanation of the puzzle
I mention here? Why are economists still using the unemployment measure
for anything?

If unemployment is used to measure some form of pressure in the job
market, what are the transition rates for unemployed vs inactive to
holding a job per unit of time?

Thanks in advance,

Laurent GUERBY

(1)
http://www.bepress.com/cas/vol2/iss1/art1

(2)
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=01&year=2007&base_name=wall_street_journal_gets_germa&162

(3)
http://guerby.org/blog/index.php/2007/01/08/140-un-rappel-sur-la-definition-du-chomage

(4)
http://guerby.org/blog/index.php/2007/06/25/163-l-ocde-lit-mon-blog