“According to OECD figures, there were 1,111,600 people at work in Ireland in 1956, the first year for which figures are available. In 1989, employment was down to 1,098,500. No other country – not a single one – experienced shrinking employment over that period of economic transformation in the western world.
This astonishing failure came despite unusually high fertility rates and an increase in women working outside the home. It also happened despite the absence of the kind of heavy-handed labour regulation that typically prevents employers from taking staff on – the OECD economy with the second worst employment record over that period was Italy, where such regulation has been commonplace.
But even with employment-killing regulation, Italy achieved net job creation, as did other countries with bad labour market institutions. Both Spain and Greece managed to grow employment by a little over 10 per cent in the 1956-89 period. Portugal experienced an expansion of one-third in the numbers at work.
It should be added, however, that regulation is not the only determinant of job creation. Britain and the US have typically had low levels of job-inhibiting rules, but they had very different experiences in the 1956-89 period. The former experienced an increase in employment of 15 per cent; the latter enjoyed jobs growth of 84 per cent.”
It’s fascinating to read the business pages sometimes and see just how devoid of critical, norm-investigating thought the commentary can be. This is Dan O’Brien, the Irish Times economics editor, writing quite a good historical overview of the Irish labour market. But at some point he decides to get so tangled up with one of neoclassical economics’ associated neoliberal assumptions, that he inverts the normal statistical process of correlation. Or at least establishes that economics is so theory-driven that someone can spend four paragraphs describing a factor held up to be causally connected with employment, while using examples at every turn that would suggest to the rational reader that there is no such connection. Astonishing indeed.
