If the EU is good, why is the unemployment rate so high in many EU countries yet low in the UK?
The UK is in the EU.Germany is in the EU and the Euro has a lower unemployment rate than the UK’s 4.1 %, (at 3.4%). EU countries Netherlands, Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic all have lower unemployment rates than UK. EU average rate is now 7%. Hungary is forcing people to work 400 hours a year unpaid overtime because it has more employment than people due to its fascist anti-migration policies.The 2008 banking crisis is the cause of the current problems and will be for the next 15 years.UK nationalised some collapsed banks and pumped money into others. Its £ was devalued and banks given borrowed funds to survive. It had to get special EU permissions to do that as EU has a fair playing field for all countries. UK borrowed heavily though the City of London at low rates and its national debt has soared to £2T. UK was still in a relatively good position before 2008 due to the outstanding economic successes of the Labour Government. That money injected into the system has allowed a lot of zombie companies to survive and new ones to be set up relying on cheap loans, Government benefits paying employee’s tax and housing, and cheap labour. They go bankrupt as soon as any subsidy condition changes. The real Brexit bonus.Other countries were suddenly caught in a different position with debt and development, and Ireland, say, had heavily invested in housing during its boom. During the boom you could change job twice a day with no trouble. The banks supplying that money went bust. Greece went on a spending spree and did not collect the taxes it was owed and corruption was endemic. That all stopped overnight in 2008 when the party stopped. Weakly governed countries were forced to pay high interest rates to prop up their economies and there were limits set by being members of the Euro.The UK unemployment rate in honest real terms is high - some 1.4M and now rising. There is a hidden unemployment rate of nearly 1M zero hours contracts - where you are counted as fully employed but may not be working. Young people get their parents to subsidise them with free food, cash and accommodation. 2M in part time employment and 1.5M in the gig economy which means you only work when the employer books you in. The media are getting fooled by comparing that with the old system where only real full time jobs were counted as being employed.
Why is the unemployment rate so high in some European countries?
high mininum wage and employer-side taxes, low supply of labor b/c of high welfare inflexible market - it is very hard and expensive to fire somebody, so firms are less likely to hire people. (they use illegal immigrant labor or temporary workers)