The iceberg decomposition: a parsimonious way to map the health of labour markets

No 610, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: This article introduces the metaphor of the iceberg in the labour market. While policy in most OECD countries has historically focussed on reducing unemployment (the tip of the iceberg), the group of inactive people (below the waterline) is much larger. Therefore, we point to the clear limitations of the unemployment rate as the (single) key macro-economic indicator of the health of the labour market. A parsimonious dashboard approach utilising the unemployment-to-population ratio and the inactivity-topopulation ratio as two highly appropriate and complementary measures is defended. We show that the ratio of these two indices varies greatly between countries, which calls for different policies for different countries.

Keywords: Employment; unemployment; inactivity; labour market policy; labour market indicators (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J08 J23 J24 J64 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/222446/1/GLO-DP-0610.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The iceberg decomposition: A parsimonious way to map the health of labour markets (2021)
Working Paper: The Iceberg Decomposition: A Parsimonious Way to Map the Health of Labour Markets (2020)
Working Paper: The iceberg decomposition: a parsimonious way to map the health of labour markets (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:610

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().