Originally Posted by
wiggin
RB, you can't possibly believe that unemployment rates are a good measure to determine whether there are regions and sub-populations that are still finding it hard to find good employment. First off, unemployment's denominator only includes the people in the labor force and does not include e.g. discouraged workers. Secondly, country-wide unemployment rates tend to mask region or population specific malaise - certainly there are parts of the US and populations in the US that due to structural factors are either under- or unemployed, despite good unemployment numbers. Lastly, the German foreign-born unemployment right is almost double the overall German unemployment rate. I have no doubt that there are other populations that, for one reason or another, still have challenges getting to full employment.