Not all unemployment is created equal.

Reader comment on: Krugman, Hassett, and German Unemployment

Submitted by Ben (United States), Nov 14, 2009 19:50

Many free market purists often bring up this idea that the unemployment rate in Europe tends to remain higher than in the US during good times. But one must also that when health care and other social safety net programs are more generous, there is less incentive to take the first job that comes along, keeping workers searching for a good job longer. In my mind, unemployment is a less important indicator of the health of a nation that the number of insured people, the number of people with housing, the number of people with access to a quality education. In the same way that we should stop using GDP as the measure of the health of our economy, we should perhaps change our metric of unemployment as well. The low unemployment number cited in this post includes many part time workers, working in low wage jobs without basic benefits.

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