In Europe, Only Berlin Follows the American Path
Carlo Basta-sin
In recent days, positive signs regarding employment have come in from Germany and the U.S. These very different systems have found an identical path in creating jobs.
It is possible that the similarities are not only statistical and that
the transformation of the German model was underestimated in a social system in which, unfortunately, inequality is tolerated as in the U.S., with serious consequences for the euro area.
The good news about the decline of American unemployment goes beyond the gray data distributed yesterday: 7.5 percent, the lowest since the end of 2008. Economists from Brookings predict in fact that the rate could go down to 7 percent before the end of 2013. But the real good news is that for the first time the drop does not depend on the small number of discouraged workers who stop looking for work, removing themselves from unemployment statistics.
Before being reassured about the American recovery, it is necessary to wait a few months.
Manufacturing investments are weak. The Federal Reserve wants to understand if it is only about a normal use of stockpile or a reluctance to invest. If, as is likely, the positive signs are confirmed, a political dilemma will open up: recovery happens regardless of the public budget being paralyzed by political disputes, and the markets could worry about the start of an exit strategy by the Federal Reserve from the unlimited liquidity policy conducted in the last few years. It is probable that the compromise will depend on the merging of two policies: a credible strategy of reentry of U.S. debt would allow a prolonging of the monetary agreement—more or less the same strategy that is being utilized, with many difficulties, in the euro zone.
This difficulty,
looking superficially at unemployment data, does not affect Germany. However, it is a part of the new cynicism to consider Germany close to full employment—a way of thinking that just 20 years ago would have been unimaginable in the culture of that country. It is true that, while in Mediterranean Europe unemployment affects all levels without precedence, in Germany it is at its lowest since the 1990s. But to the 3 million people who are unemployed,
there has not been added 1 million workers engaged in retraining or so-called “one-euro jobs.” Another 7 million Germans work in “mini-jobs,” paid less than 400 euros a month. The number of underemployed is extremely high.
If you take into account this army in reserve in the reduction of labor costs, the history of the German industrial renaissance would be rewritten in less heroic tones. That recent history continues to lack the true testimony of every economic policy of success:
domestic investments, at the lowest level of all of Europe for 10 years.
But another explanation is that among 10 million unemployed workers, or ones poorly paid, there is the more than proportional presence of foreigners or of Germans of recent immigration,
who do not have the right to vote or do not have a political affiliation.
Only this explains the silence of German politicians, including Social Democrats, on the issue of inequality, a silence that is coupled with the silence of the industrial and financial elite on the reality of the European crisis. A country which had more distinct social sensibility than the whole Western world is not seen or heard today and does not speak anymore.
Should we conclude that, as in the U.S., inequality will reduce unemployment in Europe? Thankfully the explanation is different. But not much more reassuring: German unemployment benefits from a current account surplus that is the consequence of another form of inequality, that is consistent with the rest of the world. That also has powerful redistributive effects on income. That also goes unrecognized.