This post asks whether Ireland is in a recession or a depression, using the metric of jobs lost. It compares losses in Ireland with those in the US now and in the US during the Great Depression, and finds that – with almost one sixth of its private sector gone – Ireland is in indeed a jobs depression. Come the new year, it will be time for our jobs crisis to take centre stage as its cost to society is easily as large as NAMA or the public finances.
This post extends a February comparison of private sector job losses in recent US recessions to include the latest data, finding that the last six months have seen no significant recovery in employment numbers. It then compares the current recession to the Great Depression.
What if unemployment in Ireland reaches 25% next year? What if GDP falls a quarter between 2007 and 2012? The spectre of the Great Depression looms over us large at the moment and there has been much commentary of late – see for example Robert Samuelson’s recent blog post – on whether and how our [...]
I have just discovered a set of global trade statistics updated monthly by the Dutch Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB). (Incidentally, this is not the first time I’ve come across excellent work by the CPB – their work on administrative burdens imposed by regulation is essentially the international pioneer on the topic and has [...]
Every crisis creates its own artistic genius – take for example Picasso, or the Credit Crunch Blues. Mere mortals mightn’t move in quite the same league, but we can try. So, with sincere apologies for the butchering of Jay Gorney’s lovely music and the usurpation of Yip Harburg’s original lyrics, Weird Al, this one’s for [...]
