In order to make some visual sense of employment trends, I adjusted the employment rates of selected nations, and created an index, where Q1-2008 = 100. It is not a perfect means of telling the whole story, because it does not take into account the baby-boomer retirement wave (US figures are not cut off at age 64 but the EU's figures are), so some might read the index incorrectly.
A quick look and you can see that Ireland is at the bottom, and Spain, Greece and Portugal are hoping to join it in economic despair. A second look shows that Spain and Ireland followed practically the same path with large job destruction. It so happens that both Spain and Ireland embarked on early austerity. Coincidence? I think not! A third look and you'll notice that the US and UK somewhat mirror each other...dropped a bit, but then hasn't really grown -- that's a topic for another day.
Back to Ireland.
A superficial look would suggest that Ireland has hit something close to a bottom. But that's not exactly the case.
It should be somewhat obvious, Ireland has not bottomed out in the employment rate -- it is a result of slowed population growth due to people leaving Ireland. To confirm the migration pattern, I checked Eurostat and it shows that Ireland lost a net 60,000 residents in two years (2009 and 2010), compared to a net peak gain of 66,000 in 2006.
And there you have it: No Irish Miracle and austerity does result in a deepening economic crisis when the economy is not in a good mood.
Sources of data: Eurostat, BLS and US Census Bureau. Sorry no links...go find them yourself! :D
No comments:
Post a Comment