Diverging Employment Trends in Europe and North America, 2004-2014

The financial crisis of 2007-2009 and ensuing recession in many countries resulted in job loss in some but not all nations. This paper documents the variation and begins the search for factors that might account for why employment fell more in some countries than others. Employment fell most in six nations: Ireland, Hungary, Greece, Spain, Iceland, and the United States. Of these, Ireland, Iceland, and the United States had significant bank failure;Hungary, Greece, and Spain’s job losses came from follow-on effects of the crisis. Scandinavia, France, and the United Kingdom mostly maintained employment levels while employment actually grew in Poland and Germany. Worker protections and social insurance are part of the account in these countries, but cannot fully explain cross-national variation in the response to the financial crisis and recession.Dr Michael Hout is Professor of Sociology at New York University. Prof. Hout uses demographic methods to study social change in inequality, religion, and politics. His current work uses the General Social Survey panel to study Americans’ changing perceptions of class, religion, and their place in society

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