While the financial markets wonder about the shape the economic recovery would look like, it seems to be a fact that employment will be behind the fundamentals. To get a better approach to the problem, let assume some scenarios for the expected economic recovery:
a.- From a “L” shaped recession ,to a kind of “F” shaped recovery. It is unlikely that the whole industrialized world and the emerging economies, will get their economies back on truck at the same speed .There will be differences because global economy have an heterogeneity economic framework, rather than an homogeneous one.
In fact, The European union policy framework was not designed to cope with recessions, but to keep low inflation level based on fiscal discipline. Thus ,its response to the current financial crisis was strongly influenced by it, as an institutional constraint. Quite on the contrary to the others economies, and the text book recipe, of no constraint to fight recessions, the Europe Union had to cope with a very strong one .The implications of this constraint ?: it will settle down the pace of the economic recovery in the industrialized world which will be slower ,and it will make its own recession longer. Thus, It seems probably that there will be two levels for the economic recovery. One on top (the USA , the emerging economies , and east Asia ) higher, than the other on the bottom (European Union, and Japan).(Data: IMF and World Bank)
b.- Unemployment will stay high for a longer period than otherwise , because manufacture production drops (15% in industrial countries and 10% in developing world ,excluding China , since august 2008) ,will be hard to get back quickly, while capital flows become more scarce,(pushing down investment) and hard to be available for cash flow firms requirements . All of these means higher uncertainty for better job creation rates. Besides , people already expect to be unemployed longer than previously thought , so they prefer to drop out from the labour force until labour conditions improves. Thus , current unemployment, do not reflect the real magnitude of the fall in the job creation rates , such that when it starts again to be positive , more than expected people will suddenly arise asking for those initially scarce jobs available ,adding up additional pressures to the level unemployment ,even with the recovery under way.-
On the other hand , in industrial economies most of employment is concentrated on services sector, which follow production. Following new orders for higher production , it arises the role of logistics and support services(transportation, banking , insurance, data network management, legal requirement ,and the like). Therefore, the expansionary fiscal policy , although capable to sustain job creation, it will be unable to cope completely with the kind of more specialized jobs which characterized services in the private sector, so it will be hard to get a total neutralization of job losses.-
c.- The output gap will not be enough to get the whole information about the real conditions for the economic recovery, as long as the financial conditions for borrowing and lending do not improve. Thus , the financial gap arising from the expected demand for cash flow, and the supply of it available , somehow it makes the potential output not far away from the current output , leaving without productive prospect ,a lot more than the available resources.-
