and the unemployment rate has been dropping steadily.
And the picture doesn't change substantially if you look at unemployment using the EU harmonised methodology. According to Eurostat unemployment in Latvia was running at 4.6% in March 2007 and 4.5% in March 2008, ie it is still down year on year, even though GDP was growing at a strong rate a year ago and is contracting now.
The economy has gone into recession without generating sugnificant unemployment. Of course the labour market does follow movements in GDP with a lag, and we still haven't had the "hard landing", but still, this is a surprising result.
It also helps explain why the rate of wage growth - according to the laytest data we have which is for the last quarter of last year - has't slowed dramatically, although it may now do so.
The position isn't that different in Estonia, since according to the latest data from the Estonian Labour Market board the rate of unemployment in April was still incredibly low there too - running at 2.7% - with only 17,098 people registered at the employment offices. Using the EU hrmonised methodology, the rate is rather higher - some 5.5% in March which is the latest data we have from Eurostat - but to get a comparison this is not up enormously from the 4.9% rate recorded in March 2007 using the same methodology. ie on whichever measure you use unemployment has risen, but not that much, at this point, which would explain in part why wage rises have been so stubborn in coming down in terms of their annual rate. There simply is not that much "surplus labour capacity" in Estonia, and this is of course part of the whole inflation - and now stagnation - issue.
Basically I hate to be a bore, or "party spoiler" at this point, but this is the issue that has been worrying me from the start about the whole Baltics situation, the absence of the ability of the labour market - due to years of very low fertility and substantial out-migration - to correct during a recession.
Without getting too theoretical here, there simply is no homeostatic mechanism to fall back on here to guarantee stability. Since the cohorts leaving the labour force at the upper end are going to be consistently bigger than those enetering at the bottom, there is no build up of surplus labour in the "deposit" during the slowdown.
Leaving aside the length of the present slowdown and its possible severity, we are left with the very unfortunate situation that when growth eventually does start to pick up again, there may be very little surplus labour capacity available to fuel the growth, and logically inflation would then simply start to shoot up yet one more time. Basically I would say that finding a longer term solution to this problem is now one of the most urgent questions facing the Latvian (and Estonian, and Lithuanian) government.
3 comments:
Well one possible adjustment is that latvian are leaving country to find job, letting unemployment rate low. Only question is will they come back as latvian economy recovers? Are there stat about recent migration available?
Hi,
I think you have a valid point.
"Are there stat about recent migration available?"
Not that I have seen. Basically this is one of the big problems with all the EU10 countries, we simply don't have accurate data on migration. The governments don't seem to have given it the priority I think it needs.
It is very hard to get even accurate information on migration 2004 - 2007 - unless you go to the stats offices of the UK and Ireland (in the case of the Baltics and Poland) or Spain and Italy (in the case of Romania and Bulgaria). Slovaks seem to have gone either to the Czech Republic or the UK, while Czechs and Hungarians don't seem to have moved that much. In the Baltics I have the impression that Estonians have moved a lot less than Latvians and Lithuanians, but then in the Baltic context there is the tricky issue of the first language of the potential migrant.
Basically I think governments have tried to downplay the migration issue since they see it as a political hot potatoe, only recording what they call "permanent migrants", while of course the majority are temporary who may - in cases like a serious economic crisis back home - decide to lenthen their stay (possibly indefinitely).
The thing is from an economic point of view - if the people responsible for these things were at all serious - you need accurate measures of who is in and who is out of the country to make an estimate of the potential inflation free growth rate for the economy. The lack of interest in getting accurate data on this topic from otherwise sensible people like the IMF and the world bank has simply amazed me.
On the other hand both the UK and Ireland (together with Spain) are possibly the worst affected by the credit crunch in housing outside the US (and apart from Kazakhstan) so the employment market in those countries is also deteriorating. Of course Baltic migrants can start to look for new destinations (Scandinavia?).
But at the end of the day you are right, the big danger for Latvia right now is that a lot of those over 50 who find themselves unemployed in the coming downturn simply try to get some form of early retirement or disability, while those under 40 simply up and leave.
Incidentally, since I have the smae poston the Latvian economy watch blog, and there is more comment over there, I have taken the liberty of transfering your comment over there.
I guess finish stat may help for estonians too. This is far more easier for them to migrate there than anywhere else (or maybe russia for russian part of the population?).
http://www.balticbusinessnews.com/Default2.aspx?ArticleID=2b1de4c2-e5e1-40b0-9a68-38eaccfadb96
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