For sheer ability to manipulate statistics, you can’t do better
than the Marc Weisbrot at the Center for Economic and Policy
Research. Here’s a part of his argument on why economically France isn’t any worse the
U.S.:
Now for some arithmetic regarding France’s notoriously
high unemployment rate among young people, which shaped politics
there and influenced world opinion during the youth riots in 2005.
The standard measure of unemployment puts the unemployed in the
numerator, and unemployed plus employed in the denominator (u/u+e).
By this measure, French males age 15-24 have an unemployment rate
of 20.8 percent, as compared to 11.8 percent for the US. But this
difference is mainly because in France, there are proportionately
many more young males who are not in the labor force - because more
are in school, and because young people in France do not work part
time while they are in school, as much as they do in the United
States. Those who are not in the labor force are not counted in
either the numerator or the denominator of the unemployment rate.
A better comparison then is to look at the number of unemployed
divided by the population of those in the age group 15-24. By this
measure, the U.S. comes in at 8.3 percent and France at 8.6
percent. Both countries have a serious unemployment problem among
youth, and in both countries it is highly concentrated among
racial/ethnic minorities. But the problem is not much worse in
France than it is in the United States.
What Weisbrot doesn’t reveal is the number of people not
participating in the labor force in France and the U.S. for males
age 15-24. But do a little math, and you figure out that in France
there must be about 141 males age 15-24 who don’t participate in
the labor force for every 100 who do (20.8/(100+141) = 8.6 — and
if that confuses you, email me at dwhogberg@gmail.com and I will
explain it to you). For the U.S., we have about 42 males not
participating in the labor force for every 100 that do
(11.8/(100+42) = 8.3).
Wow! That’s quite a difference. One has to wonder why France has
over three times as many males age 15-24 not participating in the
labor force as the U.S. does. Weisbrot tries to explain it away by
claiming “young people in France do not work part time while they
are in school, as much as they do in the United States.” But that
just begs the question, why don’t as many young people in France
work part time while they are in school as they do in the U.S.?
Raising that question, however, might lead to an answer that
Weisbrot doesn’t want his reader to come to: France’s rigid labor
market doesn’t provide many part-time opportunities for youth.
As a final point, I don’t fully buy the argument that the
difference between France and the U.S. in non-participants in the
labor force on the fact that French students don’t work part time.
That may be a partial explanation, but a much bigger factor is all
of the youth in the Muslim ghettos in France who can’t find work.
(Indeed, Weisbrot subtly gives this away when he writes, “Both
countries have a serious unemployment problem among youth, and in
both countries it is highly concentrated among racial/ethnic
minorities.”)
That leads to another question that Weisbrot won’t like: Why is
the U.S. so much better a creating jobs for its immigrants than
France is? Maybe it’s that the U.S. is better than France
economically.
