Yiannis Mouzakis via MacroPolis | Last July the conditionality of Greece’s third programme included savings of 1 percent of GDP from pensions. It did not require any major fortune telling skills to anticipate that this would soon lead the government of Alexis Tsipras into an extremely tense situation.
The blog RWER recently published a very interesting article about Ireland. It tells the tale of an economic miracle, which no-one has been able to figure out yet. And it raises doubts that can well apply in Spain’s case. And Krugman has written an inspiring post about the possible perverse relationship between debt and the decline in Portugal’s population, which could call into question the theory of Optimal Monetary Areas.
Miguel Navascués | Junk labour contracts in Spain were created by the former Socialist Prime Minister Felipe González in 1984. At that time, González fought against the trade unions to introduce the temporary work contract. This proved to be of no use, as unemployment had increased to about 23% by the end of his term in office in 1993.
Fernando Barciela | Spanish unemployment fell again in November, reversing a three-month upward trend. Last month, 27,000 fewer people were registered as jobless than in October, taking the total number of unemployed to 4.15 million. This is good news, given that at the peak of Spain’s economic crisis, the jobless rate reached a record 26.9%. There has also been a rise in Social Security affiliations, which increased from 16.3% in 2013 to 17.2% in October 2015.
BARCLAYS | In our view, achieving the FOMC’s target of 2% PCE inflation may require a substantial undershoot on the unemployment rate ( to 4% if not below ). Should the unemployment rate remain near current levels or should inflation expectations drift lower, the FOMC would be unlikely to hit its inflation target over the foreseeable future.
As usually happens in the month of August, unemployment in Spain rose due to the end of the summer season. The jobless rate climbed by 21,679 people and social security affiliations declined by 134,289. But the unemployment rate decreased by 8% on a year-on-year basis.
The Corner | July 23, 2015 | Spain unemployment fell by 295,600 people, or 5.4 % in Q2 from Q1. It is the second major Q2 drop since at least 2008, according to the Active Population Survey.
The Corner | June 3, 2015 | Good news for Spain’s economic recovery. The number of unemployed people in Spain saw a sharp drop in May, marking the largest fifth-month decline since records began in 1996.
SAO PAULO | May 15, 2015 | By Marcus Nunes via Historinhas | It´s such a bad ‘target’ that the Fed has been compelled to move the target frequently over the past couple of years, all the way from 6.5% to 5%-5.2%!
The Corner | April 23, 2015 | The number of unemployed Spaniards decreased in the first quarter of 2015 by 13,100 people, and reached the figure of 5,444,600, according to the official Employment Active Population survey released on Thursday (23.78% of the active population). “The employment survey seems to be the only one of which the government is not afraid,” famous radio host Carlos Alsina ironized, referring to Mr Rajoy’s cabinet struggle to contain the fallout from a tax investigation against former senior leader of the party and IMF head Rodrigo Rato.