The Macro economic graph of the decade
Source: eurostat.
What did the last decade teach us about (macro-)economics? The graph above is clear:
* ‘Drunk driving’ financial crises do happen and cast a long shadow.
* Even then, the response to these crises does matter. Eurozone sobriety led to a double dip (in case of unemployment: a double increase). After a crisis, sobriety is not the answer. Remember: the famous ant of the fable of the ant and the grasshopper was not an austerian as he invested in real assets all the time! That’s what we should have done, too. The New Green Deal could have been largely completed by now.
* Absent such activities, recovery takes a lot of time
* Ideas about ‘natural’ or ‘equilibrium’ unemployment of 5 or 6% turned out to be nonsense. Unemployment can, without problems, go as low as 3 or even 2,5%. Looking at countries (Czech Republic, Iceland) or areas (the Bay area) with low unemployment it seems that only when unemployment is around 2,5% wages really start to increase (which is not necessarily a bad thing, of course). In Bavaria and in fact the entire south of Germany and adjacent parts of Austria even rates of around 2,5% did not lead to extreme wage increases.
* Which means that the high levels of unemployment characteristic for western countries since around 1980 have been a total waste and a scientific sign of a perma slump. What a waste, what a needless misery.
Aside: neoclassical economists like Thomas Sargent, Robert Lucas, Edward Prescott and even Olivier Blanchard and Christopher Pissarides (except for Blanchard all winners of the ‘Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne’) did wage a war against the very concept of cyclical and permanent high involuntary unemployement, calling it ‘leisure’ and ‘a choice’. They lost. But as they were, for a time, highly influential we, and especially the unemployed, lost too and, as these economists only lost fame, name and prestige and not jobs and income, the unemployment lost much more.
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—— Ugarteche, Puyana and Madi ——
Gerson Lima / Maria Alejandra Madi
Edward Fullbrook and Jamie Morgan
————— Michael Hudson ————–
Maria Alejandra Madi / Jack Reardon
————- Edward Fullbrook ————-
—————— Steve Keen —————–
————— Richard Smith —————
————– Gustavo Marques————
– Victor Beker and Beniamino Moro –
————– Lars Pålsson Syll ————-
—————– Stuart Birks —————-
Edward Fullbrook and Jamie Morgan
———— Armando Ochangco ———-
Shimshon Bichler / Jonathan Nitzan
————— Mauro Gallegati ————–
————— Herman Daly —————-
————— Asad Zaman —————
—————– C. T. Kurien —————
————— Robert Locke —————-
Real-World Economics Review Blog 
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts Then, of course, there are the real numbers.
These are the real numbers. Even when they are not without flaws, they are not just a honest butr also a quite reasonable attempt as well as scientific attempt at measuring unemployment. Even when using the definition of broad unemployment, instead of the indeed rather restrictive ‘U-3’ definition, might give a better idea of the total amount of idle labor. See also chapter 4 of https://www.routledge.com/Macroeconomic-Measurement-Versus-Macroeconomic-Theory-1st-Edition/Knibbe/p/book/9780815353348 (the e-book is down to 18,50 UK pound now).
Good graph. But I assume it shows unemployment based on official stats?
Would it be possible to get a graph that shows actual (and higher) unemployment and also underemployment?
In order to make sense of current depictions of unemployment, or some might say, to get the irony, one must know at least a little bit about a lot of things— the high unemployment levels the US has experienced since the Great Recession; the political controversy around extending government benefits for the jobless; the expectation that white American men should be able to find paid, secure employment; even the popularity of reality television programming. Without context, the “punch lines” that pundits and others like to share lose their punch. These sorts of “what if” exercises help us see and make sense of the unexamined assumptions fixed in the media representations we encounter every day. One of the major strengths of the anthropological approach to studying culture is precisely this exercise of situating the seemingly mundane and taken-for-granted in its wider context. For example, there is the ethnographic portrayal of unemployment across multiple national contexts from around the world. But Anthropologists’ case studies extend beyond regional or national variations. The ethnographic subjects discussed are young and old, male and female, immigrant and native-born, of varying races and socioeconomic backgrounds. Some continue to look for paid employment; others face such structural and social obstacles that being unemployed has, in many respects, become their daily work. Yet all are unemployed or underemployed, and thus— despite the many differences between them— they share the experience of economic, cultural, and even bodily disenfranchisement. In all cases the consequences of unemployment are long-lasting, affecting social and familial relationships, personal wealth, self-identity, and mental and physical health well after re-employment. If re-employment occurs. People do not simply recover; their worlds do not just return to normal. But the ways in which their worlds change, and the ways in which they remain the same, vary dramatically across contexts. Juxtaposing ethnographic accounts of unemployment across a variety of regions, professions, and populations also allows us to identify common themes and experiences without reducing the significance of the intersection of gender, class, age, race, and citizenship in specific cultural contexts. All of which economic theory ignores and of which much economic research is unaware. The graph is just a line on a page. Contextual studies help us figure out what’s happening that leads to that graph, and many others.