The Measurement of Unemployment

Vani Borooah

Chapter 5 in Growth, Unemployment, Distribution and Government, 1996, pp 41-47 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Unemployment has emerged as the single most pressing problem facing the countries of the European Union (EU) in the 1990s.1 The reasons why unemployment matters are that ‘it generally reduces output and aggregate income; it increases inequality, since the unemployed lose more than the employed; it erodes human capital; and finally it involves psychic costs – people need to be needed’.2 In 1992, 16 million people, one in ten of the EU’s labour force, were unemployed. Of these, half had been unemployed for over a year. What makes the emergence of unemployment in the early 1990s particularly frustrating is that during 1986–90, which was one of strong job growth in the EU, the unemployment rate in the EU fell from 10.8 per cent in 1985 to 8.3 per cent in 1990. Since 1990, jobless totals in the EU have risen sharply. As Table 5.1 shows, between 1990 and 1992, unemployment rates rose in every country of the EU.

Keywords: European Union; Unemployment Rate; Unemployment Benefit; Labour Force Survey; Income Support (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-37300-6_5

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230373006_5

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