Sample Detail

The table compares the unemployment rates in 9 countries in two separate years, namely 1994 and 2004. Overall, the proportion of unemployed for almost all countries decreased, while the remaining ones increased. Furthermore, the most significant increase can be observed in the figure for Poland, while the opposite was true for Ireland. Regarding the countries with the most different changes, despite starting at the highest figure of unemployment rate at 14.8% in 1994, Ireland then declined rapidly to only 4.4% in 2004, becoming the country with the lowest unemployment rate. In contrast, this figure for Poland stood at 12.4% initially, which then exhibited a sharp growth to 19% in the final year. However, Italy and Canada's figures began at 11.8% and 10.6% initially, respectively, these figures later dropped slightly to 8.4% and 7.7%, respectively, in 2004. Notably, the proportion of employed in the UK decreased nearly by half from 9.5% to 4.7% between 1994 and 2004. As for the remaining countries with witnessing the small changes. Germany's unemployment rate stood at 7% in 2004 before rising slowly to 9.4% in 2004. A similar pattern can be seen in the data for Australia and Japan. The former figure stood at 5% initially and then grew marginally to 5.4% at the end of the period, while the latter also increased to 4.7% from 2.7% over the same period. The USA's figure, on the other hand, started at 7.2% and further dropped to 5.4% in 2004.