How hard is it to get the the unemployment right for one of the largest economies in the world? Well apparently it’s too hard for the Wall Street Journal. An article arguing that Germany has faces a shortage of skilled workers tells readers that the unemployment rate in Germany is 10.2 percent. Well, I won’t comment on the skills of WSJ reporters, but the OECD data show Germany’s unemployment rate is 8.2 percent. It’s just over 6 percent in the area that was formerly West Germany. (Germany’s national measure of unemployment, which uses a different methodology from the OECD and the U.S., shows a German unemployment rate of 10.2 percent. However, skilled reporters know that it is misleading to use this figure.)
I won’t go into the other problems in this article, such as the fact that the unemployment rate for college educated workers in Germany is higher than in the U.S., a fact that is hard to reconcile with the skills shortage story. Getting the unemployment rate right is a minimal requirement for a serious article.
–Dean Baker
