Wednesday, February 20, 2013

PIIGS Unemployment Stabilizing?


Well, except for Greece, anyway.  The chart above shows the data for the unemployment rate in the five PIIGS countries through December 2012 (November for Greece).  The interesting thing is that Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Portugal all have at least a few months of the unemployment rate looking stable, as opposed to still going up.

This is pretty encouraging - you have to stop going up before you can start to go down.  The situation in these countries is really pretty dreadful, so it would be a heartening thing if this stabilization can hold, and then a recovery begin.

2 comments:

Alexander Ac said...

Stuart, thanks.

One question - "...recovery begin".

Why exactly?

Alexander

Stuart Staniford said...

Alex - developed economies always recover eventually after financial crises. I'm not aware of a country that went into a financial crisis/recession and never came out. So it's just a question of timing (which I would agree is still very much up for debate).