Unemployment in Europe (via Google)

Despite recent headlines about data capture, Google remains an excellent source of (or gateway to) information on socio-demographic data. For example, if you type in 'population' followed by a country name, such as 'mexico' then this is what you'll get...

If you do this with any country you'll get the latest results plus a little graph which you can then click on and explore further. Similarly, if you type in 'eu unemployment' you will see a little chart showing EU unemployment - currently 10.2% for March 2012 - and how it has changed over time. If you click on the small chart you'll then see data for Europe and be able to add in data for other EU nations by clicking the boxes to the left. You can even embed this in a web page, as you can see below...

Apart from being convenient and accurate, this is also a very useful analytical tool when you need quick comparisons, like in the example below where I've compared Spain, the EU, Germany and Austria. As you can see the time-series data does not always extend as far back as we'd like but it is a great way to get your head round what is happening in different places without much effort at all. You'll notice in the embedded graphs that if you hover over a line it should tell you the data value for that point.

I've now changed the criteria in the chart so that it only includes unemployment for those aged less than 25 - and I've added in the UK too. This makes pretty grim reading for the EU, and Spain in particular...

This method also works for lots of other kinds of data. For example, if you type in 'us gdp' you'll see the data for the US but also have the option to add in lots of other comparators. One of the most interesting comparisons is looking at GDP over time, as you can see below.

I'm going to a conference in China at the end of June, hence my interest in national comparisons. This kind of thing has of course been covered extensively by Hans Rosling, but not many people know that it is fully integrated into Google's basic functionality.

NEETs in England, 2000 to 2011 (Animated Chart)

The news last week that the number of 16 to 24 year olds in England not in education, employment or training (NEET) reached an all-time high was widely covered, and quite shocking since there are now 1.16 million 16 to 24 year olds in this category. I thought it might be quite interesting to look at the data more closely to see how it compares to other time periods. The Department for Education publish the NEET data on a quarterly basis and the most recent data are for the third quarter of 2011 at the regional level. "What would the quarterly data look like in an animated bar chart?", I hear you say. Click the image below to find out!

Click to see a full size version of this animation.

I should say that you'll need to watch the clip a few times in order to make sense of it (and use the pause button), but once you get your head round it, it tells an interesting story (it also dances a bit like an equalizer on an old stereo). The lowest NEET total for England was in the second quarter of 2000 (629,000) and the highest total comes from the third quarter of 2011 (1,163,000). The highest regional percentage figure for NEETs was in the third quarter of 2011 in the North West (23.9%) and the lowest was in the last quarter of 2003 and the first quarter of 2004 in the South West (7.4%).

Lots of interesting stories here but the most striking thing is the total number of NEETs in England. 

Note: I created this using Google's motion charts and recorded it using Camtasia.

Joblessness in Edinburgh and Glasgow

I'm currently finishing off a piece of work relating to spatial patterns of labour market deprivation in Scotland so I thought I'd share a couple of findings about the contrasting cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow*. I've been using data from the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (2009) employment deprivation domain, which gives a jobless rate for each small area (Data Zone). The official explanation is that it is 'involuntary exclusion from the labour force' and it includes things like unemployment claimants and incapacity benefit claimants.

I've been looking at the data within the context of local labour markets and have done some comparisons between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The data are now a bit old (from 2008) but what's really interesting are the numbers... In Glasgow, the total population of Data Zones where the jobless rate was 25% or more was a little over 170,000 (more than the population of Dundee) and areas with a rate of 33% or more contained just over 51,000 people (more than the population of Perth). By contrast, the figures for Edinburgh were just under 25,000 and just under 11,000 respectively. Even when you take into account the difference in population (about 600,000 for Glasgow vs. 450,000 for Edinburgh) that's a big difference! I know this contrast isn't particularly surprising but the numbers did surprise me a bit.





*I've added Aberdeen and Dundee because David Manley suggested it. A good idea!