There’s a hole in the science of economics which is not dissimilar from the USA Mortgage Meltdown fiasco. The level of employment will go away up if allowed to. The situation is people drop out of the labour force and go off the Statisticians radar. Then the government boosts immigration to fix so called labour shortages. This is a trillion dollar bookkeeping fiasco and you can check it out in five minutes your self. Below is the link to the American data, although most the West is exactly the same.
Employment Status and can be generated using
the American Factfinder application located at
http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/ ... l?_lang=en.
Note on the left-side of the screen is "Data Sets” which is a menu so click on “American Community Survey." Use the radio button to select the 2005 data, the 2005 is the peak data. It’s a pop up menu so click on "List all Tables", then scroll down to the Table S2301, “Employment Status”. Select and press “next”.
“geographical type” is a menu so select “Urban Area”
Press “show result”
Scroll down in the “select geographic area” and select “Minneapolis St. Paul Bloomington MN – urban area”. Press “show result”.
The first line for Minneapolis has “In Labour Force” of 74.1%, which is the participation in the labour force figure. This is the hole in the science of economics, you can see it right there. It speaks volumes, has horrendous implications. The 74.1% compares to America’s Nov. 2009 figure of 65.0%. The figure is relative to the population over 15 years of age. The figure is slightly skewed by differences in the age pyramid of Minneapolis. Minneapolis is very good data because the population is large and the figure captures a lot of people’s behavior, 1.8 million adults. However, the difference with the national figure is wild and unexplained. No economist has ever paid much attention to people not in the labour force.
To verify the USA national figure of 65.0%, which won’t be at your finger tips, go the Bureau of Labour Statistics site.
http://www.bls.gov/ Click on “Unemployment Rate, news release”. Select “employment situation summary”. About five paragraphs down the “civilian labour force participation rate” is given.
