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Showing posts with label Unemployment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Unemployment. Show all posts

Monday, September 6, 2021

‘Silent crisis’ looms as US to end Covid-19 aid for millions of jobless


Tough times: A sign advertising job openings is seen in New York. The US economy is far from healed, with 5.3 million jobs lost to the pandemic yet to be restored and employers adding a mere 235,000 positions in August - Last year, the United States massively expanded unemployment aid as Covid-19 broke out.— Reuters pic


WASHINGTON, Sept 6 — Spending less on food. Drawing down on retirement savings. Dropping out of the workforce altogether.

Last year, the United States massively expanded unemployment aid as Covid-19 broke out. But in the coming days those benefits will end, forcing millions of jobless Americans — some of whom haven’t worked for the entire pandemic — to make hard choices about how they will get by in an economy newly menaced by the Delta variant.

“I have no idea how we would survive, just on my daughter’s income,” said Deborah Lee, an unemployed phlebotomist in Arizona who is recovering from a Covid outbreak that affected her daughter and two of her three granddaughters.

The government-funded programmes that increased weekly payments and gave aid to the long-term unemployed and freelancers were credited with keeping the United States from an even worse economic collapse last year.

In recent months they have become controversial, with some states ending them early and arguing they encouraged people not to return to jobs that Covid-19 vaccines made safe, though studies have disputed that contention.

From September 6 they will end nationwide, and while economists don’t expect them to meaningfully dent the US economy’s recovery from its 2020 debacle, they’ll undoubtedly up the pressure on the unemployed.

“I think it’s going to be an underappreciated event in the economy,” said Andrew Stettner of progressive think tank The Century Foundation, predicting that 7.5 million people will be relying on the programmes when they end.

“It’ll be kind of a silent crisis.”

‘Screwed over’

The expansion of the unemployment safety net occurred in March 2020, when Congress rushed to blunt the emerging pandemic with US$2.2 trillion (RM9.11 trillion) in spending through the CARES Act rescue package.

While never meant to be permanent, the benefits were reauthorised twice, most recently in the US$1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan enacted by President Joe Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress last March.

While many in the Republican Party at first backed the programmes, by this year their lawmakers were arguing against them, and 26 states, most with Republican governors, moved to end them early in whole or in part.

A study published last month by researchers from American and Canadian universities found only modest improvements in hiring and earnings in some of those states that ended the aid early, while spending fell 20 per cent.

Meanwhile the economy is far from healed, with 5.3 million jobs lost to the pandemic yet to be restored and employers adding a mere 235,000 positions in August, according to government data released Friday.

In Delaware, Ohio, Karen Coldwell says she sends out about 10 job applications weekly but has yet to be hired. All other openings she sees are for low-wage work, the kind of jobs she held when she was younger.

At age 64 she is not yet ready to retire, but worries she’ll have to start dipping into her retirement savings once the long-term unemployment programme ends.

“There’s just nothing out there. There’s jobs, but the money’s not there anymore,” Coldwell said. Others can’t return to the workforce, even though they know the benefits that make up their only income are ending. Brooke Ganieany of The Dalles, Oregon, said she has no one to care for her toddler son if she were to find employment.

“I feel kind of screwed over,” the 21-year-old told AFP. “I feel like they’re doing this to make us have a plan and get back to reality, which is not exactly the slogan they should be using.”

Unequal damage

Those eligible will continue to receive benefits under states’ regular unemployment programmes — but the end of a US$300 extra weekly supplement means their checks are about to shrink.

“It’s going to affect it so much. I’m going to have to cut back on food,” said 58-year-old Karen Williams, an unemployed graphic designer in Pennsylvania.

Gregory Daco of Oxford Economics predicted the cut off in benefits would lower household income by US$4.2 billion per week in September, or about US$210 billion annualised for the month.

“It’s not going to be the type of shock that puts the US economy into reverse,” he said in an interview, but predicted that “lower-income families and minorities are more likely to be negatively impacted.”

Fearful of further coronavirus variants and with her daughter missing badly needed pay from the family’s battle with Covid-19, Lee said she is waiting to hear whether the government will grant her disability aid for a hand injury, conceding her days of employment are likely behind her, at least for now.

“I don’t even know what the answer is,” she said. — AFP

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Monday, May 13, 2019

South Korea's latest big export: Jobless college graduates


South Korea's latest big export: Jobless college graduates - Reuters

Left: A jobseeker stands as he gets into the 2018 Japan Job Fair in Seoul, South Korea. Jobseekers attend the 2018 Japan Job Fair in Seoul, South Korea. (Filepics)


SEOUL: Cho Min-kyong boasts an engineering degree from one of South Korea's top universities, a school design award and a near-perfect score in her English proficiency test.

But she had all but given up hope of finding a job when all her 10 applications, including one to Hyundai Motor Co, were rejected in 2016.

Help came unexpectedly from neighboring Japan six months later: Cho got job offers from Nissan Motor Co and two other Japanese companies after a job fair hosted by the South Korean government to match the country's skilled labor with overseas employers.

"It's not that I wasn't good enough. There are just too many job seekers like me, that's why everyone just fails," said the 27-year-old, who now works in Atsugi, an hour southwest of Tokyo, as a car seat engineer for Nissan.

"There are numerous more opportunities outside Korea."

Facing an unprecedented job crunch at home, many young South Koreans are now signing up for government-sponsored programs designed to find overseas positions for a growing number of jobless college graduates in Asia's fourth largest economy.

State-run programs such as K-move, rolled out to connect young Koreans to "quality jobs" in 70 countries, found overseas jobs for 5,783 graduates last year, more than triple the number in 2013, its first year.

Reuters Graphic
(Graphic: Korea's young talents going abroad png - https://tmsnrt.rs/2LwlSUU)

Almost one-third went to Japan, which is undergoing a historic labor shortage with unemployment at a 26-year low, while a quarter went to the United States, where the jobless rate dropped to the lowest in nearly half a century in April.

There are no strings attached. Unlike similar programs in places such as Singapore that come with an obligation to return and work for the government for up to six years, attendees of South Korea's programs are neither required to return, nor work for the state in the future.

"Brain drain isn't the government's immediate worry. Rather, it's more urgent to prevent them from sliding into poverty" even if it means pushing them abroad, said Kim Chul-ju, deputy dean at the Asian Development Bank Institute.

In 2018, South Korea generated the smallest number of jobs since the global financial crisis, only 97,000.

Nearly one in five young Koreans was out of work as of 2013, higher than the average 16 percent among the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In March, one in every four Koreans in the 15-29 age group was not employed either by choice or due to the lack of jobs, according to government data.

Reuters Graphic
(Graphic: S.Koreans landing overseas jobs by country 2018 png - https://tmsnrt.rs/2DZCTR9)

LABOR MISMATCH

While India and other countries face similar challenges in creating jobs for skilled labor, the dominance of family-run conglomerates known as chaebol makes South Korea uniquely vulnerable.

The top 10 conglomerates including world-class brands such as Samsung and Hyundai, make up half of South Korea's total market capitalization.

But only 13 percent of the country's workforce is employed by firms with more than 250 employees, the second lowest after Greece in the OECD, and far below the 47 percent in Japan. "The big companies have mastered a business model to survive without boosting hiring," as labor costs rise and firing legacy workers remains difficult, said Kim So-young, an economics professor at Seoul National University.

Yet while increasing numbers of college graduates are moving overseas for work, South Korea is bringing in more foreigners to solve another labor problem – an acute shortage of blue collar workers.

South Korea has the most highly educated youth in the OECD, with three-quarters of high school students going to college, compared with the average of 44.5 percent.

"South Korea is paying the price for its overprotection of top-tier jobs and education fervor that produced a flood of people wanting only that small number of top jobs," said Ban Ga-woon, a labor market researcher at state-run Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education & Training.

Even amid a glut of over-educated and under-employed graduates, most refuse to "get their hands dirty", says Lim Chae-wook, who manages a factory making cable trays that employs 90 people in Ansan, southwest of Seoul. "Locals simply don’t want this job cause they think its degrading, so we're forced to hire a lot of foreign workers," Lim said, pointing to nearly two dozens workers from the Philippines, Vietnam and China working in safety masks behind welding machines.

In the southwestern city of Gwangju, Kim Yong-gu, the chief executive of Kia Motor supplier Hyundai Hitech, says foreign workers are more expensive but he has no choice as he can't find enough locals to fill vacancies.

"We pay for accommodation, meals and other utility costs in order not to lose them to another factory," said Kim. Out of a staff of 70, 13 are Indonesian nationals, who sleep and eat at a building next to his factory.

NO HAPPY ENDING FOR EVERYONE

For those who escaped Korea's tough job market, not all has been rosy.


Several people who found overseas jobs with government help say they ended up taking menial work, such as dishwashing in Taiwan and meat processing in rural Australia, or were misinformed about pay and conditions.

Lee Sun-hyung, a 30-year old athletics major, used K-move to go to Sydney to work as a swim coach in 2017 but earned less than $A600 ($419) a month, one-third what her government handlers told her in Seoul.

"It wasn't what I had hoped for. I could not even afford to pay rent," said Lee, who ended up cleaning windows at a fashion store part-time before she returned home broke less than a year later.

Officials say they are making a "black list" of employers and improving the vetting process to prevent recurrence of such cases. The labor ministry also established a "support and reporting center" to better respond to problems.

Many on the programs lose touch once they go overseas. Almost 90 percent of the graduates who went abroad with the government's help between 2013-2016 didn't respond to the labor ministry's requests about their whereabouts or changed their contact details, a 2017 survey showed.

Still, the grim job market at home is driving more Koreans to the program every year. The government has also increased relevant budget to support rising demand - from 57.4 billion won ($48.9 million) in 2015 to 76.8 billion won in 2018, data released by lawmaker Kim Jung-hoon shows.

"The government isn't scaling up this project to the extent we would worry about brain drain," said Huh Chang, head of the development finance bureau at South Korea's finance ministry, which co-manages state-run vocational training programs with the labor ministry. Rather, the focus was on meeting growing demand for overseas experience given so many graduates are outside the workforce, Huh added.

A hopeful scenario would be for the economy to one day make use of the resources these graduates bring home as experienced returnees, Huh said.

For 28-year-old K-move alumni Lee Jae-young, that feels like a distant prospect.

"The one year abroad added a line in my resume, but that was about it," said Lee, who returned to Korea in February after working as a cook at the JW Marriott hotel in Texas. "I'm back home and still looking for a job." - Reuters

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Sunday, May 6, 2018

Youth unemployment hit record high in 2017: MIDF Research

Young and jobless | Invest Cyberjaya

Graduate unemployment was 45.5 of overall jobless amid skills mismatch and demand for low-skilled jobs, says MIDF Research

PETALING JAYA: Youth unemployment was at its highest ever at 10.8% in 2017, of which graduate unemployment constituted about 40.5% or 204,000 of total unemployment due to skills mismatch amid a backdrop where demand for low-skill jobs continues to reign – which in turn may leave the government falling short of its 35% skilled workforce target by 2020, according to MIDF Research.

For every 100 jobs available, there are 76 jobs for elementary occupations and 10 jobs for plant and machinery operators and assemblers, which leaves 14 jobs for the high-skill and other low-skill occupations.

About 86.3% of job vacancies in 2017 were for low-skill jobs which was deemed less suitable for a fresh graduate while high-skill jobs such as professional, technicians and associate professionals, comprised 4.1% of the total job vacancies.

It noted that the high single- and double-digit unemployment rate among youth, defined as those between 15 and 24 years old, as being normal not only in Malaysia, but in Europe, the US and South Korea.

The high youth unemployment rate was mainly contributed by soaring graduate unemployment, despite the steady increase in tertiary-educated workers joining the workforce, which was also the fastest growing segment at 4.1%, followed by secondary at 3.2% and no formal education by 0.3%.

Employment share of professionals and technicians and associate professionals improved to 12.2% and 10.5% in 2017 expanding at 0.8% and 4.6% respectively.

“In terms of share, the rising stake of skilled-worker or tertiary-educated is in line with the Eleventh Malaysia Plan. Under the plan, the government estimated skilled-worker to total workforce ratio to touch 35% by 2020. Nevertheless, we view the ratio is not expected to reach the target at the current pace,” MIDF Research said.

“We forecast the skilled-worker ratio to register at 32% by 2020. Continuous improvement in production efficiency, resource allocations and better technology adoptions under the Industry 4.0 will facilitate and accelerate the productivity level in Malaysia in the long run,” it added.

The overall unemployment rate in the country remained low at 3.4% last year.

Malacca remains as the state with the lowest youth unemployment rate for the seventh consecutive year at 2.9% while Sabah recorded the highest at 13.5% in 2017.

Meanwhile, Selangor the largest employer, 23.2% of total national employment saw overall unemployment rate of 2.8% and youth unemployment rate of 9.4% last year.

The overall youth unemployment rate across all states registered poor performances compared with the previous year, 2016.

In 2018, the youth unemployment rate is expected to fall slightly to 9.9% and the overall unemployment rate to stand at 3.3%.

The job market outlook for commodity-based sectors is expected to improve in tandem with recovering commodity prices. This in line with anticipation of improvement in global trade, and higher demand for export products is expected to benefit industries such as electrical & electronics and mining.- sunbiz@thesundaily.com


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May 9, 2017 - Based on the latest developments in global and domestic economies, we anticipate youth unemployment rate to slightly fall to 10.1% while overall unemployment rate to stand at 3.3% in 2017. Youth unemployment rate hits 10.5% with number of unemployed youth reached 273,400 persons in 2016. Youth ...
 

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Sunday, October 9, 2016

Malaysia's jobless rate on the rise as economic expansion slows


Unemployment in Malaysia is rising, the latest data released by the Statistics Department show.

The obvious correlation to the rise in the jobless rate, which in Malaysia is counted as those who are unemployed but remain actively looking for a job, is the slower pace of economic growth.

The economy, up until the second quarter ended June 30, has slowed for five quarters in a row with weak exports the main drag on growth.

Although private consumption and investments supported the economy in the second quarter, economists are not very confident that this will drive growth in the coming quarters without supportive government policies and improvement in overseas consumer demand.

This will have implications for jobs and the economy.

There could be reason for short-term cheer with data exceeding expectations, as August trade data released yesterday show but there are indications that downside risks remain.

Positive sentiments as reflected in the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research’s (Mier) business conditions index, which is now above the 100-point threshold, indicating that businesses’ confidence levels are up, can just as easily dissipate.

Consumers do not share the same sentiments as businesses, as the Mier’s consumer sentiments index show.

Although rising steadily since the beginning of the year, the index is still below the 100-point threshold, largely reflecting benign inflation and the fading impact of the goods and services tax implemented last year.

Standard Chartered plc Asean economic research head Edward Lee says private consumption growth momentum will not be sustainable because of the weak labour-market conditions.

Besides the higher unemployment rate, weak wage- and job-growth together with the slowdown in the property market and financial-market volatility to also affect spending sentiment.

Lee, who expects the economy to grow 3.8% this year compared to the official estimates of 4% to 4.5%, adds that the weakening labour market will be a drag on economic growth.

“Private consumption will be key to achieving this target, and we think it may come in weaker than the central bank expects due to weaker labour-market conditions.

“We will therefore monitor consumption metrics closely over the next few months,” he says.

Cautious consumer sentiment largely reflects the state of the job market and high household debt.

Different views: Consumers do not share the same sentiments as businesses, as Mier’s consumer sentiments index shows.

Data from Bank Negara and the Nikkei Malaysia manufacturing purchasing managers index (PMI) compiled by IHS Markit Ltd paint a bleaker picture.

While the September Nikkei Malaysia manufacturing PMI, which was released at the end of last month saw an improvement from August, it is still below the 50-point threshold, indicating that the manufacturing sector is still contracting.

But what is interesting is the press statement following the release of the August data, in which IHS Markit economist Amy Brownbill says the Malaysian manufacturing sector saw a sharper deterioration in operating conditions underpinned by quicker declines in output, new orders and employment with the rate of job shedding the fastest in over three years.

The August PMI report noted that firms cut back on payroll numbers as part of efforts to make cost savings.

Bank Negara report

A Bank Negara report also showed that labour market conditions have become challenging, with the recent high unemployment rates coinciding with lower job vacancies available per active job seekers.

AllianceDBS Research chief economist Manokaran Mottain said in a report released last week that while the manufacturing sector was shedding jobs, selected services subsectors has added headcount and could be cushioning job losses in the manufacturing sector.

More than half of the workforce are employed in the services sector with the manufacturing sector employing about 16%.

Further evidence of the deteriorating conditions in the job market comes from the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF).

Manokaran says the monthly contribution value growth rate from the EPF’s members have moderated, signalling weak wage growth in recent years.

This also mirrors the slowdown in the economy over the past few quarters as businesses will not give higher increments or pay out bonuses.

Manokaran says based on trend-growth estimates, seasonally and inflation adjusted monthly EPF contribution growth has tapered to 2.7% in February on a year-on-year basis before the voluntary employees contribution rate reduction effective in March, down from around 10% growth in 2011.

He noted that while average household income grew 9.6% per annum between 2012 and 2014 in inflation adjusted terms based on the Statistics Department’s household income survey, this was largely propped up by government cash transfers (Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia payments) to the bottom 40% of earners.

“On average, given that 65% of household income is from paid employment, signs of wages growth moderation could weigh on household income growth going forward,” Manokaran says.

He adds that the state of labour market and income growth are among the key underlying factors in assessing the state of economic growth outlook.

Earlier this week, the World Bank slashed its growth forecast for Malaysia from 2016 to 2018 on the weak exports and commodity-price outlook. Its chief economist for the East Asia and Pacific Region, Sudhir Shetty, says despite the region’s favourable prospects, growth is vulnerable to a sharp global financial tightening, a further slowdown in world growth or a faster-than-anticipated slowdown in China.

By Fintan Ng The Star/ANN

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Tuesday, October 2, 2012

34,000 more out of work in Eurozone

BRUSSELS: Unemployment in the eurozone remained at record highs in August and the number of people out of work climbed again, highlighting the human cost of the bloc's three-year debt crisis.

Joblessness in the 17 countries sharing the euro was 11.4% of the working population in August, which was stable compared with July on a statistical basis, but another 34,000 people were out of work in the month, the EU's statistics office Eurostat said yesterday.

That left 18.2 million people unemployed in the eurozone, the highest level since the euro's inception in 1999, while 25.5 million people were out of a job in the wider 27-nation European Union, Eurostat said.

The debt crisis that began in Greece in 2010 and has spread across the eurozone to engulf Ireland, Portugal, Cyprus and the much bigger economy of Spain has devastated business confidence and sapped companies' abilities to create jobs.

A European-wide drive to cut debts and deficits to try to win back that lost confidence has led governments to cut back spending and lay off staff, while stubbornly high inflation and limited bank credit are adding to household's problems.

Joblessness could go beyond 19 million by early 2014, or about 12% of the eurozone's workforce, according to a new study by consultancy Ernst & Young, predicting that rate to rise to 27% in indebted Greece. That compares with 24.4% in the country in June, the latest data available.

“In this difficult environment, companies are likely to reduce employment further in order to preserve productivity and profitability,” the report said.

Eurozone manufacturing put in its worst performance in the three months to September since the depths of the 2008/2009 financial crisis, with factories hit by falling demand despite cutting prices, a survey showed yesterday.

The International Monetary Fund expects the eurozone's economy to shrink 0.3% this year and only a weak recovery to emerge next year that will generate 0.7% growth.

But the joblessness picture also obscures wide regional variations. In Austria, unemployment is the eurozone's lowest at 4.5% in August, a slight fall from July, while Spain has the highest rate at 25.1% in the month.

While a bursting of a real estate bubble in Spain and the end of a decade of credit-fuelled expansion in Greece account for difficulties in the Mediterranean, policymakers still face the challenge of trying to revive growth across the bloc.

“The recession in the eurozone is due to the tough consolidation course in the peripheral countries, weaker global demand and the high uncertainty coming from the sovereign debt crisis,” Commerzbank economist Christoph Weil wrote in a recent research note.

Eurozone and UK central bankers will likely leave policy unchanged at their meetings this week, but both will announce additional measures to help their moribund economies before the year's end, according to a poll. - Reuters

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

US Growing Unemployed: A Case of Benign Neglect



Photo: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

The political power of the working class has diminished in recent decades, and that helps to explain why US politicians have not paid enough attention to the unemployment problem.

The high unemployment rate ought to be a national emergency. There are millions of people in need of jobs. The lost income as a result of the recession totals hundreds of billions of dollars annually, and the longer the problem persists, the more permanent the damage becomes. Why doesn’t the unemployment problem get more attention? Why have other worries such as inflation and debt reduction dominated the conversation instead? As I noted at the end of my last column, the increased concentration of political power at the top of the income distribution provides much of the explanation.

Consider the Federal Reserve. Again and again we hear Federal Reserve officials say that an outbreak of inflation could undermine the Fed’s hard-earned credibility and threaten its independence from Congress. But why is the Fed only worried about inflation? Why aren’t officials at the Fed just as worried about Congress reducing the Fed’s independence because of high and persistent unemployment?

Similar questions can be asked about fiscal policy. Why is most of the discussion in Congress focused on the national debt rather than the unemployed? Is it because the wealthy fear that they will be the ones asked to pay for monetary and fiscal policies that mostly benefit others, and since they have the most political power their interests – keeping inflation low, cutting spending, and lowering tax burdens – dominate policy discussions?

There was, of course, a stimulus program at the beginning of Obama’s presidency, but it was much too small and relied far more on tax cuts than most people realize. The need to shape the package in a way that satisfied the politically powerful, especially the interests that have captured the Republican Party, made it far less effective than it might have been. In the end, it had no chance of fully meeting the challenge posed by such a severe recession, and when it became clear that additional help was needed, those same interests stood in the way of doing more.

Republican policymakers give us all sorts of excuses for blocking further action to help the unemployed. We are told the problem is structural – there is a geographical or talent mismatch between labor availability and labor needs – and nothing can be done to help. But something can be done. We can help workers move to where the jobs are, encourage firms to locate in areas where workers are readily available, and help with job retraining. If mismatches are really the problem, why aren’t Republicans leading the charge on these policies? If they care about the unemployed rather than the tax burden of the wealthy, then why are they allowing community colleges – one of the best ways we have of providing job training for new and displaced workers – to be gutted with budget cuts?

We are also told that the deficit is too large already, but there’s still plenty of room to do more for the unemployed, as long as we have a plan to address the long-run debt problem. But even if the deficit is a problem, why won’t Republicans support one of the many balanced budget approaches to stimulating the economy? Could it be that these policies invariably require higher income households to give something up so that we can help the less fortunate? Tax cuts for the wealthy are always welcome among Republicans no matter how it impacts the debt, but creating job opportunities through, say, investing in infrastructure?

Forget it. Even though the costs of many highly beneficial infrastructure projects are as low as they get, and even though investing in infrastructure now would save us from much larger costs down the road – it’s a budget saver, not a budget buster – Republicans leaders in the House are balking at even modest attempts to provide needed job opportunities for the unemployed.

The imbalance in political power, obstructionism from Republicans designed to improve their election chances, and attempts by Republicans to implement a small government ideology are a large part of the explanation for why the unemployed aren’t getting the help they deserve.

But Democrats aren’t completely off the hook either. Centrist Democrats beholden to big money interests are definitely a problem, and Democrats in general have utterly failed to bring enough attention to the unemployment problem. Would these things happen if workers had more political power?

When we talk about leveling the playing field, it is generally in terms of economic opportunity. However, leveling the political playing field is just as important, and in the past unions provided workers with a powerful voice in the political arena. But unions have largely faded from the scene, leaving workers with very little organized power. Correcting the political imbalance this has created through the renewed political empowerment of the working class must be part of any attempt to improve our response to serious recessions.

It also suggests a solution — renewed political empowerment of the working class — but that’s easier said than done.

By MARK THOMA, The Fiscal Times
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Thursday, May 3, 2012

Eurozone unemployment hits record 10.9% as manufacturing slumps to recession!


Eurozone unemployment hit a record in March, with Spain's 24.1% rate setting the pace.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Unemployment in the eurozone rose to 10.9% in March, another sign of the broad economic weakness and possible recession across the continent.

The unemployment rate across the broader 27-nation European Union remained at 10.2% in March, according to a organization report Wednesday.


But the 17-nation eurozone unemployment edged up from 10.8% in February. The EU and eurozone rates are the highest since the creation of the common euro currency in 1999.

There are now 13 nations in Europe struggling with double-digit percentage unemployment, led by a 24.1% rate in Spain, which was a record high, and 21.7% in Greece.

The rising jobless rates are primarily blamed on the ongoing European sovereign debt crisis, which has forced governments to take tough austerity measures to cut spending.


There are 12 countries in Europe that have had two or more consecutive quarters in which their gross domestic product has dropped -- a condition many economists say define a recession. Nine of the countries are in the eurozone, and three use their own currency.

The United Kingdom, which had an 8.2% unemployment rate in its most recent reading, is the largest economy now in recession.

The entire EU and and eurozone are widely believed to be in recession as well, a fact likely to be confirmed when their combined GDPs are reported on May 15.

Even some of the healthier countries in Europe are likely to meet that criteria, including Germany, the EU's largest economy and one in which unemployment is 5.6%, the fourth-lowest rate on the continent.

German GDP declined 0.2% in the fourth quarter and many economists are forecasting another drop in the first quarter, suggesting Germany could be in recession soon.



By contrast to Europe, the U.S. unemployment rate has been steadily falling, reaching 8.2% in March. The jobless rate here reached a 26-year high of 10.0% in October 2009, but it has declined in six of the last seven months, shaving almost a full percentage point off the 9.1% rate of last August.

Economists surveyed by CNNMoney forecast that the rate will stay unchanged in the April jobs report this Friday, while hiring is expected to pick up to a gain of 160,000 jobs

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Eurozone manufacturing heads towards recession

 Greece-EU

(BRUSSELS) - Gloom over eurozone manufacturing deepened in April, highlighting the impact of policies to control budgets and signalling recessionary pressures, a Markit survey showed on Wednesday.

A key index of activity based on a survey by Markit fell to almost the lowest level for three years.

Markit publishes closely watched leading indicators of economic activity and in its latest survey for its purchasing managers' index the firm said: "The eurozone manufacturing downturn took a further turn for the worse in April."

The adjusted manufacturing PMI figure, closely watched as an indicator of economic trends, fell to 45.9 from 47.7 in March.

A figure of below 50 points to contraction and Markit noted that "the headline PMI has signalled contraction in each of the past nine months."

The chief economist at Markit, Chris Williamson, said: "Manufacturing in the eurozone took a further lurch into a new recession in April, with the PMI suggesting that output fell at (a) worryingly steep quarterly rate of over 2.0 percent."

He said that "austerity in deficit-fighting countries is having an increasing impact on demand across the region" and that "even German manufacturing output showed a renewed decline."

Williamson commented that the latest forecast from the European Central Bank "of merely a slight contraction of GDP (gross domestic product) this year is therefore already looking optimistic."

He added: "However, with the survey also showing inflationary pressures to have waned, the door may be opening for further stimulus."

His remarks highlight controversy over policies in many countries to correct budget deficits and heavy debt to install confidence on debt markets where governments borrow.

There are increasing warnings that the eurozone must raise economic growth, but opinions differ on the best route, with some saying that budget austerity opens the way to structural reform and competitiveness and others saying that extra stimulus is essential.

Markit said that "the April PMIs also indicated that manufacturing weakness was no longer confined to the region's geographic periphery."

In Germany, which has the biggest economy in the eurozone and has shown broad resilience to downturn elsewhere, Markit also noted a setback.

"The German PMI fell to a 33-month low, conditions deteriorated sharply again in France and the Netherlands also contracted at a faster rate," it said.

Markit said: "There was no respite for the non-core nations either, with steep and accelerating downturns seen in Italy, Spain and Greece. Only the PMIs for Austria and Ireland held above the 50.0 no-change mark."

Markit said that manufacturers reported weak demand from clients inside and outside the zone and this had hit even German companies.

The worsening outlook for eurozone manufacturing was also affecting the job market, Markit said, just as eurozone data put the unemployment rate at a record high level.

In manufacturing "job losses were reported for the third straight month in April, with the rate of decline the sharpest in over two years," Markit said on the basis of its survey. - AFP.

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Friday, April 20, 2012

Unemployment Fuels Debt Crisis

Job-seekers wait outside a job center before opening in Madrid, Spain. Spain’s jobless rate has more than doubled since 2008 after the collapse of a real estate market that fueled a decade of economic growth. Photographer: Angel Navarrete/Bloomberg

Surging unemployment rates from Spain to Italy and Greece are threatening efforts to quell the region’s debt crisis and keeping bond yields close to record premiums relative to benchmark German bunds. 

Joblessness is soaring as European nations reduce spending, igniting strikes and protests from Athens to Madrid. Unemployment in Spain surged to almost 24 percent, pushing the euro-region level to 10.8 percent in February, the highest in more than 14 years. Italy’s rate is at 9.3 percent, the most since 2001, hampering efforts to spur economic growth.

Deepening recessions in Italy and Spain contributed to a five-week slide in Italian and Spanish bonds as the shrinking tax base helped lead to both countries raising their deficit targets. The yield premium investors demand to hold Spanish 10- year debt over German bunds reached a four-and-a-half-month high this week.

“The higher the jobless rate, the more that has to be spent on benefits, creating the potential for a negative spiral,” said Christian Schulz, an economist at Berenberg Bank in London and a former ECB official.

Berenberg Bank predicts euro-region unemployment will peak at 11.5 percent in September, he said.

The extra yield investors demand to hold Spanish 10-year bonds rather than similar-maturity German securities was 411 basis points yesterday, compared with an average 130 during the past five years. The rate has risen more than 80 basis points this year. The spread was 376 basis points for Italy and 1,072 basis points for Portugal.

Youth Joblessness

Spain’s jobless rate has more than doubled since 2008 after the collapse of a real estate market that fueled a decade of economic growth. The country is now home to more than one third of the euro-region’s jobless and more than half of young people are out of work.

Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards protested on March 29 in a general strike against Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s overhaul of labor market rules and the deepest budget cuts in at least three decades that are pushing the economy deeper into its second recession since 2009.

“Spain faces formidable challenges, especially concerning youth unemployment,” European Union Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told lawmakers at the European Parliament in Strasbourg Wednesday.

Italy’s jobless rate rose to the highest in more than a decade in February and the International Monetary Fund forecast on April 17 that unemployment will reach 9.9 percent this year. Italian bonds reversed morning gains yesterday after the government cut its growth forecasts and abandoned a goal to balance the budget next year.

Estimate Revisions

Italy’s gross domestic product will contract 1.2 percent this year, more than twice the previous forecast, and the deficit will end next year at 0.5 percent, more than the 0.1 percent previously forecast. The Italian announcement came six weeks after Rajoy abandoned Spain’s deficit goal for next year.

Joblessness in both countries may worsen as the recession deepens and rigid labor market laws are overhauled. Rajoy passed in February a plan to make it cheaper for employers to let workers go, while Italy gave companies more leeway to fire workers without fear of court-ordered reinstatements.

“High unemployment means a very dissatisfied electorate and makes it difficult to get stuff done,” said Padhraic Garvey, head of developed market debt at ING Groep NV in Amsterdam. “It makes it significantly more difficult to pass austerity measures and exacerbates a difficult situation.”

Rajoy’s Challenges

Rajoy probably will face further unrest if he’s forced to implement more budget cuts to meet ambitious deficit goals. His government has now pledged to reduce the shortfall to 5.3 percent of GDP in 2012 from 8.5 percent in 2011 and by more than 2 percentage points next year to get within the EU’s 3 percent limit. Despite a raft of austerity last year, the country achieved a deficit reduction of less than 1 percentage point.

Falling joblessness in Germany underscores the widening gap between the resilience of the euro-region’s largest economy and the so-called periphery. The nation’s adjusted jobless rate slipped in March to a two-decade low of 6.7 percent, according to the statistics office. While the 17-member euro-region economy will shrink 0.4 percent in 2012, Germany’s economy probably will grow 0.7 percent, according to economists’ forecasts compiled by Bloomberg.

“The divergence between Germany and the other economies is here to stay,” said Christoph Rieger, head of interest-rate strategy at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. “It provides a structural reason for spreads to stay wider, regardless of what other progress is made on containing the crisis.”

Greek Elections

In Greece, where official data showed unemployment climbed to 21 percent in January, elections scheduled for May 6 may produce a hung parliament, raising questions about the nation’s ability to implement its austerity measures. The nation’s 2 percent bond due in February 2023 trades at about 25 cents on the euro.

In Portugal, where the government forecasts the unemployment rate will average 13.4 percent this year, up from 12.7 percent in 2011, Soares da Costa SGPS SA, Portugal’s third- biggest publicly traded construction company, said it’s expanding abroad and eliminating jobs at home, where it faces a slump in government infrastructure spending. 

“High and rising unemployment is likely to impact at a political level and may make the reforms more difficult to undertake,” said Eric Wand, a fixed-income strategist at Lloyds Banking Group Plc in London. “If the political desire to reform comes in to doubt, then the market wouldn’t like that. There’s good scope for the crisis to get worse in the near term, the economies are still on pretty shaky ground and there’s a lot of political risk.”

By Daniel Tilles at dtilles@bloomberg.net.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Eurozone unemployment hits new record


The euro sculpture at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt Unemployment is at the highest rate since the euro was launched in 1999

The jobless rate in the 17 countries that use the single currency was 10.4% in December, unchanged from November's figure which was revised up from 10.3%.

Some 16.5 million people were out of work in the eurozone in December, up 751,000 on the year before.

The highest unemployment rate remains in Spain (22.9%), while the lowest is in Austria (4.1%).

Unemployment has been rising throughout 2011, as the debt crisis in the region has continued. In December 2010, the unemployment rate in the euro area was 10%.



Investment delays
 
Guillaume Menuet, economist at Citigroup, said he expected the number of people out of work to increase throughout 2012.

"If you think about the direction of employment expectations that you see across various business surveys, the outlook for employment doesn't look particularly enticing, simply because the uncertainty is very high.

“Start Quote

Much energy and argument has been spent on this agreement. It is questionable, however, whether it will have much influence on the immediate crisis. ”
"In many cases you find firms continuing to delay investment projects. For those that are still making profits, hiring is being frozen, and for those which are under pressure to hit results or losing money, job losses are becoming the only solution that they have," he said. 

In the 27 EU countries, the unemployment rate was 9.9% in December, with 23.8 million people out of work. November's figure was also revised up from 9.8% to 9.9%.

The biggest increases over the past year were seen in Greece, Cyprus and Spain.

The largest falls took place in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Deteriorating situation

  The issue of jobs and economic growth was a key area for discussion at this week's summit of EU leaders in Brussels.

On Monday, figures showed that the Spanish economy shrank by 0.3% in the last quarter of 2011. It is now widely expected that Spain will enter recession in the first quarter of this year.

Also on Monday, France cut its growth forecast for this year to 0.5% from 1% "to take into account the deterioration of the economic situation".

At the Brussels summit, 25 of the 27 member states agreed to join a fiscal treaty, aimed at much closer co-ordination of budget policy across the EU to prevent excessive debts accumulating.

The UK and the Czech Republic did not sign up to it. UK Prime Minister David Cameron said he had "legal concerns" about the use of EU institutions in enforcing the treaty, while the Czechs cited "constitutional reasons" for their refusal.

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