Sunday, 23 January 2011

OI, ELSTAT, DO A PROPER LFS RELEASE!

ELSTAT's latest LFS release troubles me in more than one way. 13.5% unemployment is a good reason to be troubled, but I think there's worse news than this to come - and by that I don't just mean more unemployment.

As you know, I monitor LFS for the really juicy data beyond headline unemployment, which like most headline figures is arguably open to manipulation. Sadly this stuff is not available on monthly releases - the figures are just too small to be reliable. The key missing data on a monthly release are: unemployment by educational level, unemployment by nationality, and of course, unemployed with job offers.

Unemployed with job offers will probably have fallen to just under 8% based on the model to date. However, I suspect that unemployment among foreign workers will start to converge with that of natives as public sector and graduate vacancies tail off. Similarly, I think the differential in unemployment between graduates and school leavers will increase. Both of these are bad news because they are tied directly to the possibility of civil unrest.


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