Spain's accounting of Unemployment vs. other countries.

[Jacobtm]

Spain's unemployment is frequently reported at 19%, far higher than any other rich country. Is part of the disparity explained by different unemployment benchmarks in Spain vs. other rich countries? I.E. if Spain was using our U-3 unemployment standard (thought by most to be a crass underestimation), would the numbers seem so bad?

[Tender Branson]

All countries using the ILO-Labor Force Survey have the same criterias in surveying unemployment. But these benchmarks are somewhat ridiculous, because in these phone surveys people aged 15-75 are asked if they have at least worked 1 hour a week to account for in the Labor Force.

In Austria for example, this leads to an overestimation of the employed labor force by at least 200.000, while the amount of unemployed is considerably lower than the amount of people that is registered at the National Labor Agency and who are actually claiming benefits.

The Labor Force Survey for example estimated only 190.000 unemployed in the first quarter of 2009, while actually 290.000 were registered as unemployed at the National Labor Agency during this time.

That means at least in the case of Austria, that the LFS produces artificially lower unemployment rates relative to national (registering) methods.

But for one thing it's still good: to compare unemployment data with other nations.