Employment rates

The employment rate of a country is in many ways a better indicator of the state of employment than the unemployment rate. For example, in 2010, the US had an unemployment rate of almost 10%, while the employment rate (for those between 15 and 64) was about 67%, according to the OECD. 

Some other figures (latest unemployment rate - employment rate in 2010):

Switzerland       3.1% and 78.6%

Canada             7.2% and 71.5%

Germany           5.3% and 71.1%

U.K.                 7.7% and 69.5%

U.S                  7.4% and 66.7%

France              11%  and 64%

Mexico              5.1% and 60%

Spain              27.2% and 58.6%

Turkey              8.1% and 46.6%

Unemployment rates are notoriously unreliable because states define them in different ways.

People who choose not to work, or have retired early, or live off their investments, or have just dropped out of the workforce and no longer seek employment, make up most of the difference between the two rates. In the US in 2010, that difference was (100 - (67+10)) = 23%. In Turkey, I wonder how the 45% difference is made up?

Favourite Quotes

I'm going to put some quotes I like here, updating the page from time to time like the "Headlines" post.

"The US is a state designed by geniuses so it could be run by idiots." (quoted by Friedman)

"It's like farting in a cheese shop: it's not the main problem." Sean Locke.

Utilities doomed by solar panels!

Fascinating post by David Roberts on Grist about how the utilities business model, in use for a hundred years or so, might be destroyed by creeping use of home solar panels.

Based on a report by the industry itself, it suggests that the electric grid might go the way of the fixed phone, Kodak, RIM and the US Postal Service. Even limited penetration of solar panels, the report says, will begin a vicious cycle in which the utilities will have to increase costs to compensate for declining revenues, thus driving more people to install solar, and so on.

Let's hope this is prescient.