This (European) morning, Jérôme did a story on Eurotrib about a report from the McKinsey Global Institute think-tank that the FT had covered with the headline ‘Real Swedish jobless rate 15%’. So much for the vaunted Scandinavian model, eh?

The report contains
this lovely graphic, displaying the breakdown of what they call the Swedish de-facto unemployment.

I think this is a great graphic, and not one I’ve seen before: they break down the factors of unemployment and underemployment and display them.

In fact, I like it so much I made a similar one for the US:

I’m not sure that the McKinsey Global Institute or the FT would be quite so happy to see that breakdown. Explanation after the fold…

The first three columns of my graph correspond to the latent job candiates and underemployed in the MGI graph.

As explained in my previous ET story on the topic I’ve included figures for the massive US prison population and the massive size of its military forces on the basis that both predominantly move people that would be otherwise unemployed out of the labour force. Think of them – however unfairly – as the equivalent of “government programmes”.

The figure for people unemployed through disability is calculated from the US census figures, which give 11.5 people with an “employment disability” – that makes work difficult or impossible – and an unemployment rate of 40% for all disabled people. Since I can’t find out the unemployment rate for those with employment disabilities directly I’ve averaged the case where none of them work and the case where 60% of them work. It’s an estimate.

I’m not just being mean here: the MGI’s analysis is excellent and gives a good impression of the unemployment situation in Sweden. However, neither they nor the FT draw attention to the fact that this analysis can be done for other countries: I’ve picked on the US here because the statistics are easily available on-line.