[Pen-l] CEPR sloppy with data again: NEW RELEASE: U.S. Unemployment Now as High as Europe

[Laurent GUERBY <laurent@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

>From the email announce of:

http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/US-EU-UR-2009-05.pdf

On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 15:00 -0400, Center for Economic and Policy
Research (CEPR) wrote:
> [...] The current economic crisis, however, has turned the case for
> the U.S. model almost entirely on its head. As Figure 1 illustrates,
> according to the most recent internationally standardized data from
> the OECD, the United States is now tied for the fourth highest
> unemployment rate among the major OECD countries. In March 2009, the
> U.S. unemployment rate was 8.5 percent,[6] only lower than Spain (17.4
> percent), Ireland (10.6 percent), and France (8.8 percent), and level
> with Portugal. Sixteen other major OECD economies had a lower
> unemployment rate, including Denmark (5.7 percent), Germany (7.6
> percent), Italy (6.9 percent), the Netherlands (2.8 percent), and
> Sweden (8.0 percent). [...]

Tables on OECD stat site gives for 2007 (latest detailed data currently
available on the web site) on male 25-54 the following data:

employment/population
France: 88.3% (hence 11.7% jobless)
USA: 87.5% (hence 12.5% jobless)

normalized unemployment rate
France: 6.3%
USA: 3.7%

So with a slightly higher relative working population in this age/sex
group France has ... a 70% higher unemployment rate than the USA.

No serious economist should compare and sort data without any care like
CEPR does in this press release, this is simply misleading the public
and spreading dubious (mis)information.

Sincerely,

Laurent



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