“The Politics of Removal”: Dressing Up The French Unemployment Fiasco

Wolf Richter   www.testosteronepit.com   www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter Ugly unemployment numbers are politically inconvenient in democracies. Red-faced politicians have to come up with excuses, and entire elections can be lost over them. So, every country has implemented inscrutable statistical systems to make unemployment look better, or less disastrous, regardless of what realities on the ground may be. France, which has one of the most generous (and expensive) unemployment compensation systems in Europe, does that too. But it also has an administrative tool at its disposal: removing tens of thousands of people every month from the unemployment compensation rolls for spurious reasons. There is even a term for it: the “politics of removal.” Like every country, France has a slew of reports that attempt to shed light on, or obfuscate its unemployment fi...