Latvia’s true unemployment hit 30 percent once underemployment and emigration are counted.

Evidence

If we add those who work part time or gave up searching for work, we get peak unemployment/underemployment of 30 percent in 2010 and 21 percent in the third quarter of 2011. If we add emigration to the figure, we end up with an unemployment/underemployment rate of 29 percent at the peak of the Latvian recovery. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 606

Categorization

• QUESTION: Does the emigration-adjusted figure imply the recovery GDP numbers conceal a shrinking labor force rather than genuine growth?
• XREF: Connects to the book’s recurring point that headline recovery numbers routinely mislead; ties to critiques of GDP as a welfare measure in the austerity literature.