Tag Archives: Unemployment

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Are Facebook And Unemployment Correlated?

In this industry, correlations are something we are very familiar with. For instance platinum follows the same trend as the CRB (commodities) index which has nothing to do with platinum yet, where it goes, platinum goes and that has been the case for years. In a similar way, there’s an inverse correlation with gold and the USD - when one goes up the other tends to go down.

Step into the internet world and you can find another example of, in this instance, a rather unusual correlation: Facebook and unemployment. You may be surprised to learn that the unemployment rate is more correlated with Google searches for “Facebook” than with any other search term!

It is a well known fact that some companies and industries do especially well in tough times and Facebook is one of them. Google’s Correlate finds search patterns which correspond with real-world trends. If you enter a query into the search box, it will give you search terms that have a similar pattern of activity. The tool also works the other way so that you upload your own data, and see what search terms line up. If you upload actual unemployment rate data to see what search patterns correlate most closely, Facebook searches dominate. Higher unemployment translates to more Facebook searches, and lower unemployment means fewer Facebook searches. They are so closely tied to unemployment, they outnumber searches involving actual unemployment-related topics!

It may seem reasonable to suggest that more unemployed people spend more time surfing the internet, either to pass their time or to connect with people who might help them find a job, but it is still surprising that Facebook is by a long way, the most correlated search. There doesn’t seem to be any other logical explanation for this occurrence and Facebook has not, as yet, provided any hard data as to why this is happening. Our explanation? Don’t ask us - we’re too busy working!

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Is the Youth Unemployment Crisis Real?

Is there or isn’t there a youth unemployment crisis? Sensationalist daily press certainly tries to make us believe that we are essentially living through an apocalypse with youth unemployment skyrocketing as futures slip down society’s drains. Reuters blogger Zachary Karabell, however, has recently argued that young people are not forced into unemployment but choosing to hold out from the job market until they find their ideal job positions. But can the situation really have been so largely misinterpreted around the world? The answer might lie in a middle ground, for although the unemployment problem cannot be dismissed quite so simply, Karabell seems also right to point to important shift in the employment culture. Banc De Binary’s CEO Oren Laurent explains an alternative way of understanding the new work culture that is seen arising across the world. Read more…

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Is The Euro Doomed?

Has the euro been a disaster, or what? It seems pretty self-evident that it has been. Unemployment is 27.6 percent in Greece, 26.2 percent in Spain, 16.5 percent in Portugal, and 13.6 percent in Ireland, which, remember, is supposed to be the austerity success story. What’s happened? Well, exactly what euro-skeptics feared would happen from the time the common currency was just an idea: a shock hit some parts of Europe worse than others, and there hasn’t been any easy way to adjust. The ECB’s one-size-fits-Germany policy has left crisis countries no choice but to try to pay-cut their way to prosperity which would be painful enough if it were even possible. But it’s really not when interest rates are all but at zero. The euro has turned a recession into a depression. Countries can’t devalue their currency or cut interest rates or even run bigger deficits when they get into trouble, so their trouble gets worse. It goes against all intuition that a less flexible monetary would work as well as a more flexible one during a global financial crisis….and against all evidence too. Fixed exchange rates work until they don’t. But when they don’t, they really don’t, like the Great Depression ‘don’t’! So it would be strange to say the gold standard had worked as well as other monetary regimes if you just disregard the 1930s. It’s equally strange to say fixed exchange rates are working today if you just disregard the countries where they aren’t. Because there are plenty of those. Half a continent of them, in fact!

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A Greek Tragedy

A Greek Tragedy

Unemployment in debt-ridden Greece jumped to a record of 26 per cent in the final quarter of 2012. The number is alarming in a country struggling to get back on its feet after a tragic second half of the past decade. The harsh austerity measures coupled with a difficult recession have had a massive impact on the Greek workforce.

The numbers were poorer than the previous quarter’s 24.8 per cent, and 20.7 per cent in the corresponding time a year earlier. The Greek statistics authority announced Thursday that 1.29 million people were unemployed in October-December 2012.

Greece’s economy has been falling to pieces over the last three years, brutalized by its on-going financial woes. The country is living on international loans and hand-outs, given only on the condition that Greece continues its policies of fiscal responsibility.

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