In 2004 according to OECD, normalized unemployment for men aged 25 to 54 was 4.6% in the USA and 7.4% in France. At the same time and for the same population the employment rate (number of workers divided by population) was 86.3% in the USA and 86.7% in France.

This example shows that the unemployment rate is 60% higher in France than in the USA, yet more people in this demographic are working in France than in the USA, which is counterintuitive if it is expected that the unemployment rate reflects the health of the labor market

Even across time in the USA for a given level of “unemployment” you’ll get very different employment rate, which is coherent with unemployment being a fake and useless measure.

It’s showing U3 as topping out at about 8% in the early-1980’s recession. If memory serves, the max unemployment rate then was over 10%. And I’m pretty sure the sources were using U3.

Am I missing something?

As an aside, if we’re at 6.5% now on U3, with all the “adjustments” that Government statisticians have been able to muster (Birth/Death, etc), and unemployment is almost certainly going to get much worse next year and possibly in 2010, then we’re very likely to go well over 8% on U3. Roubini predicted 9%. So does that mean that we’re going to face an unemployment problem worse than the early-1980’s recession (which was the worst since the 1930’s)?

I do not agree. The alteration of perception has already occured – debt is now the enemy. Excessive credit expansion cannot be forced upon frightened, unwilling borrowers.

Without debt creation, how does a debt-based economy expand?

There are probably a lot of people who have access to the employment data before it’s released to “J6P”. Maybe there are limitations on the trading that they can do in their own accounts, but if so, they can just sell the information to money managers.