I'm sure it has happened before, but I just can't remember when. The NYT has a positive story today about how Germany's export sector is booming, leading to healthy growth and a declining unemployment rate. It's not a bad piece, although the article still thought it best to report Germany's official unemployment rate of 9.8 percent, instead of giving readers the 7.1 percent OECD standardized rate, which applies a similar methodology to the one used for measuring unemployment in the United States. As I have asked before, what possible reason can the NYT have for presenting the official German unemployment rate (this counts part-time workers as being unemployed), when a measure that applies the U.S. methodology is readily available? Furthermore, it does not even bother to inform readers that it is applying a different measure. This is comparable to reporting to readers that the temperature in Germany is 20 degrees, without even mentioning that the measure is centrigrade, not farenheit. I have raised this issue repeatedly with reporters and editors. None has ever given me a reason for using a measure of unemployment that will be misunderstood by almost all of the people who read it. Using this misleading measure of German unemployment makes the German economy look bad. Many conservatives want to make the German/European welfare state look bad. Draw your own conclusions.
--Dean Baker
