Balkans fact of the day

Which three economies in Europe have the lowest employment to population ratio, circa 2013?

Greece, Croatia, and Serbia comes in last.

That is from the World Bank and ultimately Eurostat, see p.5 (pdf).

You will note of course that Croatia and Serbia have their own floating rate currencies.  In Serbia the measured unemployment rate is about nineteen percent and a few years ago was above twenty-five percent.

While I do usually favor floating currencies, there are limits to what they can accomplish when other policies are bad.  If you are wondering, the rate of inflation in Serbia has been falling from an average of about seven percent to about two percent.  Wages in the country are often sticky and public sector jobs on average pay higher than private sector jobs (see the first link).  Exports and productivity are weak.

By the way, here is my earlier post which covers unemployment in Jamaica.

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