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Humpday Humor: Zimbabwe's Unemployment Rate Is 4%, 10.7%, 60% Or 95%

Tyler Durden's picture




 

While all the western banks are clearly envious at the facility with which Zimbabwe managed to hyperinflate away its debt mountain after simply printing a few trillion in fiat monetary equivalents, which instead of the stock market hit the broader economy, there is much more the "developed" world can learn and is learning from Robert Mugabe domain of experimental yet practical monetarism. On one hand, we find that it was former Goldmanite Mario Draghi, whose recent idea of a "Bad ECB Bank" was taken from none other than Zimbabwe:

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe created a company that will buy non-performing debt from banks. The Zimbabwe Asset Management Corp. will purchase the loans under commercial terms, and assign collateral and all other rights, the central bank said in its monetary policy statement yesterday.

 

The company will seek “to clean up and strengthen banks’ balance sheets and provide them with the liquidity to fund valuable projects for the economy to rebound and to mitigate loss of confidence,” the central bank said.

 

Non-performing loans at Zimbabwean banks swelled to 18.5 percent of total loans, or $705 million, in June from 1.6 percent in 2009, the central bank said. The high level of bad debt is the key threat to the country’s banking industry, Harare-based IH Securities said in May.

Why is Zimbabwe doing this? Simple: because as the Central Bank reports, Zimbabwe's NPL ratio at various banks is as high as 91%, or roughly where it is in Europe if all the optical illusions, and Copperfieldian distractions were taken away (in addition to Cypriot deposits of course).

But that is nothing compared to the lessons none other than the US Department of Labor is about to learn from Zimbabwe's own Bureau of Lies and Seasonality of Labor Statistics. Because in Zimbabwe the unemployment rate is either 4% or 95%. Depending on the "data" source.

Africa Check explains:

Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate “of 85%” is a ticking time bomb Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the country’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), recently said.

But how accurate is the 85% figure? Depending on the source, Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate has been estimated at as low as 4% and as high as 95%.

In its 2013 election manifesto, President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party claimed unemployment levels stood at 60%. The secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Union, Japhet Moyo, told a newspaper late in 2012 that the unemployment rate was between 80% and 90%. The country’s National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO) suggested that overall unemployment in 2011 stood at 95%.

The MDC say that the figure cited by Tsvangirai was drawn from a study carried out by the party in October 2013 and “updated” in April 2014. Spokesman Douglas Mwonzora told Africa Check that it showed that “formal unemployment has risen to over 85%”. He however failed to produce a copy of the research report despite numerous requests.

Zanu-PF spokesman Rugare Gumbo said the 60% estimate referred to in the party’s election manifesto “might have been accurate then, but things have changed”. “You just have to come and do research yourself,” he added before abruptly ending the call.

Documents provided to Africa Check by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions as evidence of their 80% to 90% claim contained no data to support it.

Christopher Mweembe from NANGO said the organisation had taken the 95% estimate from the CIA World Factbook, an online database of country information and statistics published by the US Central Intelligence Agency.

The website lists unemployment estimates of 80% (2005) and 95% (2009) for Zimbabwe, but does not provide references for the data. The site also cautions readers that: “[T]rue unemployment is unknown and, under current economic conditions, unknowable”.

In stark contrast, the World Bank website lists Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate at only 4%. It bases the figure on data compiled by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). But closer examination reveals that this “modelled estimate” draws on data that is a decade old.

A labour survey published in June 2011 by Zimbabwe’s agency for national statistics, Zimstat, put unemployment at 10.7%. This figure was based on an “expanded” definition of unemployment that included people who had given up looking for work.

Figures based on a narrower “strict definition” of unemployment, which only counted people who were out of work but actively looking for a job, put unemployment at just 5.4%.

The 2011 survey provides the most recent official data on unemployment and was based on interviews conducted with Zimbabweans from 9,359 households. The Zimstat survey concluded that 6.1-million people aged 15 and older were “economically active”. (Zimbabwe’s population was estimated to be around 12-million at the time.)

As is the norm worldwide, the survey classified anyone who had worked for at least an hour – for cash or in kind – in the week preceding the survey as employed. As a result, around 5.4-million people fell into the “employed” category.

According to the survey, most of the 5.4-million Zimbabweans worked in the informal sector (84%), with only 11% (606,000) in formal employment. But only about a quarter of all those counted as employed received some form of financial compensation for their work.

Like many African countries, Zimbabwe classifies subsistence farming as “employment”, the manager for labour statistics at Statistics South Africa, Peter Buwembo, told Africa Check.

“This is reflected in the Zimbabwe figures where agriculture [both formal and subsistence] contributes 66% of total employment, while in South Africa [which does not class subsistence farming as employment]  it contributes 4.4%,” Buwembo said.

When the 2011 Zimstat labour survey was conducted it was still an internationally accepted survey practice that people who “worked for their own consumption” could be classed as employed. But this changed last year, when the international body of labour statisticians decided that work “for own final use” should not be counted as employment.

“If all countries implement this, these unrealistically low unemployment rate figures in African countries will stop,” Buwembo said.

The high informal sector component adds to the “gross underestimate” of unemployment. Tina Koziol, an economist from the South African consultant group Econometrix, explained that methods used to measure informal employment are “problematic” and that the official rate of 10.7% can be regarded “as dubious”.

“Overall, the conclusion remains that there is an absence of reliable data on Zimbabwe’s employment statistics.”

Conclusion: The data is unreliable

Very little primary data exists on unemployment in Zimbabwe. Claims that the unemployment rate is 60%, 85%, 95% or even as low as 4% – as stated by the World Bank – are not supported by reliable, current data.

The most recent labour survey conducted by the country’s agency for national statistics – which pegged unemployment at 10.7% – is three years old and has been criticised as a “gross underestimate” of the problem. The vast majority of the Zimbabweans it classified as “employed” were in fact eking out a living as subsistence farmers.

Neither the Zimstats estimate, nor the much higher unemployment estimates of 60% or 85% or 95%, can be considered reliable. Given the perilous state of Zimbabwe’s economy, unemployment levels are certainly extremely high. But to understand the scope of a problem and implement policies to help solve it you need to be able to quantify it. The first step would be a regular survey of employment and unemployment levels in the country, conducted according to the latest accepted international practices. It is something that is urgently needed.

* * *

And below is an artist's impression of America's own BLS as it was reading this article.

 

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Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:29 | 5276980 Dr Strangemember
Dr Strangemember's picture

I think the author made a mistake and mentioned Zimbabwe instead of the USA.  

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:30 | 5276984 Gankfest
Gankfest's picture

Being unemployed isn't really funny anymore... -_-

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:33 | 5276993 GET.OFF.MY.LAWN
GET.OFF.MY.LAWN's picture

Neither is 'community organizing'

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:35 | 5277005 max2205
max2205's picture

Picture is racist

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:42 | 5277030 Rainman
Rainman's picture

for perspective, consider USSA food stamp recipients are 4 times the entire population of Zimbabwe.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:52 | 5277074 Boris Alatovkrap
Boris Alatovkrap's picture

Now is Boris to understand mandate for "stamp out poverty". Poof!

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:53 | 5277080 Latina Lover
Latina Lover's picture

Zimbabwe should send all of their excess pop to the USSA via the southern border to collect food stamps. They would fit in perfectly, and likely raise the standard of every day discourse.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 17:07 | 5277135 Everybodys All ...
Everybodys All American's picture

None other than Nanny Pelosi stated that she believed that food stamp usage was considered an economic stimulus and she is far from being alone. We are living in crazy town.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 19:14 | 5277584 Boris Alatovkrap
Boris Alatovkrap's picture

Boris is hear of "Walking Dead" serial TV episodic and is anxiously watch on internet channel, but is very boring and unbelievable. Is turn out Boris is tune to Nancy Pelosi on C-SPAN.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:55 | 5277076 Latina Lover
Latina Lover's picture

Bet the fed reserve envies Zim's ability to print without consequence.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:55 | 5277089 disabledvet
disabledvet's picture

That's the Belgian Congo to you. "And next time use a rubber."

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 19:11 | 5277579 mkkby
mkkby's picture

The BLS can learn something here.  All those people wandering landfills for something to eat -- entreprneurs!  Same for food stamp collectors.  Add them to the birth death model and you have negative enemployment. 

Now the sheeple will vote for the kenyan.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 20:20 | 5277774 didthatreallyhappen
didthatreallyhappen's picture

beat me too it

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:29 | 5276983 saints51
saints51's picture

If I answer the question with my reasons, will I be labeled a racist?

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:35 | 5276997 GET.OFF.MY.LAWN
GET.OFF.MY.LAWN's picture

Naw... With your 'saintly' street cred, you'll just be a run of the mill RAYCISS & get off with a reduced sentence

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:41 | 5277035 saints51
saints51's picture

lol, that's not too bad. I was worried I might get to see one of those camps for reeducation.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:46 | 5277060 GET.OFF.MY.LAWN
GET.OFF.MY.LAWN's picture

If you end up making it into one of those camps, keep the 'SAINT' thing on the down low or you'll end up in the 'CULTIST' block of the camp & end up as Steve McQueen chopping up centipedes for protein...

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:56 | 5277090 Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill's picture

You've got to make it out of the 'showers' first.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:59 | 5277102 Strider52
Strider52's picture

GET.OFF.MY.LAWN: +1 for the Papillon reference.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 17:18 | 5277163 GET.OFF.MY.LAWN
GET.OFF.MY.LAWN's picture

@Strider

~~~

"Hey, you bastards, I'm still here"

~Papillion/franc7s sawyer

 

Dega:
Remember what the chicken said to the weasel?
Papillon:

If he was a healthy weasel, the chicken didn't get a chance to say anything.
Wed, 10/01/2014 - 17:24 | 5277189 Pool Shark
Pool Shark's picture

 

 

Francis? Is that you?

 

 

 

 

 

[sorry; didn't mean to blow your cover...]

 

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 17:29 | 5277202 GET.OFF.MY.LAWN
GET.OFF.MY.LAWN's picture

just a 'shout out'

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:51 | 5277073 Steaming_Wookie_Doo
Steaming_Wookie_Doo's picture

Well, I can guess that in Zimbabwe there's no FSA, so people would have to do *something* to make a living, even if it was recycling or subsistence farming. I actually find it very strange that S.Africa wouldn't consider subsistence farming an occupation. Hell, it should probably be *the* default occupation (for those of you not hooked on iPhones, weed, foodstamps, etc).

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:37 | 5277008 insanelysane
insanelysane's picture

ADP is the source for the 4% as their spokesman that was on CNBS stated that the BLS's number is always too high.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:38 | 5277010 nope-1004
nope-1004's picture

I think its day-of-the-week dependant.

 

Monday 4% UE

Wed 10.7% UE

Thurs 65% UE

Friday 95% UE

Ever try to get something done in one of those countries on a Friday?  Pfffftttt.......

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:37 | 5277014 Bell's 2 hearted
Bell's 2 hearted's picture

i thought black was black

 

is their kettle blacker than ours?

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:38 | 5277018 buzzsaw99
buzzsaw99's picture

zimbabwe got corzined bitchez

You're next Bubbles. [/Peter Venkman]

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:45 | 5277024 SILVERGEDDON
SILVERGEDDON's picture

Racists are unemployed people too. Sarc. Worse is - 

The number of people who know how to learn and work for a living is about 4 % - OR LESS - in the USA.  

Try geting anyone to split firewood, raise and harvest crops, or dress out their pork chops for dinner.

Ain't gonna happen.

Still waiting for their EBT card to arrive so they can go to the magic box store to pick up their load of palstic wrapped GMO shit.  

Zombies come the end of the free magic box store................... 

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:54 | 5277077 disabledvet
disabledvet's picture

Coal from Columbia is 25 bucks a ton dopey.

Split firewood? More like make furniture. We have already bankrupt nukers and the only way they're gonna pay for the shut down costs is buying cranking up the output.

Good luck competing with the Colombia River...let alone Columbian Coal. (Or the Powder River Basin. That's four tracks wide and over 1800 miles!)

Google "Kayenta Coal" if you want to understand why your silver prices keep collapsing Silvergeddon.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 18:26 | 5277376 Boxed Merlot
Boxed Merlot's picture

Try geting anyone to split firewood...

 

Are you kidding?  Jobs like that will land one in county jail first before state prison after trial!  With all the nannies being taught in government schools of the evils of fire and worse, smoke, even burning cellulose in publically offered "chiminenias" is a high risk activity, even on foggy evenings.  Brown shirts are more common in city limits and especially HOAs.

 

My Buck stove in the 90's was indispensible and I loved my Stihl.  Still have it as a matter of fact, the saw, not the stove.  Upgraded to natural gas insert at a fraction of PG&E at the time.  I'm sure that will go to tax oblivion in the near future too, no doubt.  

 

Never know what ya got till it's gone.

 

jmo. 

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:45 | 5277053 disabledvet
disabledvet's picture

How about growth from their "land expropriation division"?

Again...SERIOSULY...getting an outright inflation is well nigh impossible if all your fiat goes to bailing out The Bag...err...DEBT Holder.

That QE thing combined with America's post 9/11 War on America says to me the entire financial "plan" was to eliminate the existence of actual cash inside the US economy.

So what if oil goes to 500 bucks a barrel? Is anyone calling Peak Oil now that prices are COLLAPSING?????

NOOOOO THEY ARE NOT

So now "we" have a an absolutely STUPENDOUS amount of debt followed by an explosion in LIQUIDITY with prices COLLAPSING, ZERO growth and....surprise, surprise...a HUGE move higher in the dollar.

Well..since dollars are debt the only folks buying debt here are the over levered nut jobs "who are driving this economy forward!"

That says to me the Government itself is the Hedge Fund here...and we all know how hedge funds have done since the 2008 collapse.

Still haven't bailed on the treasury bet yet...but I'm getting ready to.

Still think it's a great asset class...not saying sell..just saying with an energy boom like the USA has going here a forty percent correction says to me "that's a lot of buying opportunities." Russel has already been annihilated so there goes the very idea that any of this "growth" has been inflated away.

Should be noted large cap growth has had an outstanding year.

Might be time to bust out the monopoly board here.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:59 | 5277103 Bell's 2 hearted
Bell's 2 hearted's picture

 

 

"the entire financial "plan" was to eliminate the existence of actual cash inside the US economy."

 

that is what happened, but don't think they planned it.

 

i'll take bernanke's word on wealth effect and virtuous cycle as goal (never had a prayer, however)

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:46 | 5277056 besnook
besnook's picture

subsistence farming in zimbabwe is dumpster diving in the usa. so everyone is working except ebt users. they could get jobs as dumpster divers, too and then there will be real full employment here in the usa.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:47 | 5277059 world_debt_slave
world_debt_slave's picture

wheel of misfortune

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:51 | 5277067 El Diablo Rojo
El Diablo Rojo's picture

I couldn't agree more.  Light bulbs continually are portrayed as yellow. Someone say "racist"?

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:55 | 5277083 Took Red Pill
Took Red Pill's picture

You can't trust any governments figures.  Zimbabwa, China, US. All BS!

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 16:55 | 5277085 vegas
vegas's picture

Well yes, just substitute the U.S. or the BLS wherever you see the word Zimbabwe and it tells you everything you need to know.

 

www.traderzoo.mobi

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 17:08 | 5277139 Inthemix96
Inthemix96's picture

These fuckers need to define 'Unemployed'.

It always depends on what your definition of 'Is' is, doesnt it?

Its like that fat pasty faced fucking clown that has never held a real job who runs GB INC, the 'Camoron', just look at that cunt.  Never known real life cos the fucker never lived it, but gets paid a salary in excess of 150,000 pounds a year of my fucking money money to double the national debt in 4 fucking years, plus expenses and meatings with the fucking lizard Queem.

He is, for all intents and purposes, unemployed, as the fucker does nowt, waxes lyrical, and scams the public while the national debt has doubled under his government.

Just like your lot.  And that is exactly why they all need hanged.  Parasites living on not just mine, but all of our collective backs, just like the fucking filth that run the banks, living on your blood sweat, and tears, with interest.

And they know this now, and want people like us shut up.

Come and fucking shut me up you cunts, NSA GCHQ, come on, stop people like me, exposing people like you, and the paedophile cameron, hague, clarke, and their mates.

How you bastards in the NSA and GCHQ can do your jobs, knowing what you know about the filth that rules us makes me sick.  Have you fucking swines no morals?  Backbone?  Frightened for a wage?  No fucking standards you wont drop?

The times coming you cunts.  Dog himself wont help you.  Filthy fucking perverts.

And of course, Cunts.

;-)

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 17:42 | 5277240 Schaublin
Schaublin's picture

I concur with your some of your observations but detect anger and hostility in your posts. Wishing violence and death on sociopaths does not harm them - but it does harm yourself. Sociopaths are born that way and their behaviour is perfectly predictable.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 17:52 | 5277277 Inthemix96
Inthemix96's picture

You detected right then Shaublin mate.

Anger and hostily off me??  Get fucked??

I would personally burn these cunts at the stake.  And any fucker ass-ociated with them.  You call them sociopaths friend.

Just wait till the majority wake up.  These limp wristed arseholes wont last two days in proper civil unrest.  Being the fucking parasitical leaching cunts they are.

Lets see the 'Sociopaths', fend for themselves shall we?

Eh?

;-)

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 19:42 | 5277659 GeoffreyT
GeoffreyT's picture

I also detected anger and hostility in his post - but it was entirely justified.

 

Fucking psychobabble - where everyone has to speak sotto voce, mind their p's and q's, hew to authority and not call a cunt a cunt - has to die. It is a deliberate trope designed to stifle rational expressions of outrage, to chill dissent by pretending that any outrage is 'unreasonable'.

 

Fuck that. As Mencken wrote all those years ago: 'Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.'

 

He also wrote - 'The State is not force alone. It depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility. Its aim is not merely to make him obey, but also to make him want to obey.'

And the coup de grâce: 'Democracy is based upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos, else even half-wits would argue it to pieces. Its first concern must thus be to penalise the free play of ideas...'

 

If Mencken had lived to write on the internet, the world would be radically different: that motherfucker could agitate like no other writer since Diderot.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 20:18 | 5277764 Schaublin
Schaublin's picture

Look at history and observe the same pattern. When cumulative anger at particularly egregious examples of central power coincides with weakness in the system and a spark is lit,  people do spit on their hands, hoist the black flag (or versions of it) and begin slitting throats. When the bloodshed is over, it is found that the most enthusiastic throat slitters take over the positions of power. 

Meet the new boss...

Animal Farm says it all in a short book.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 17:17 | 5277166 yogibear
yogibear's picture

No problem. The US government can make 50% unemployment look like only 8%.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 17:46 | 5277253 robertocarlos
robertocarlos's picture

It's 4%. You have to be looking for a job to be counted as unemployed. If you give up, you don't exist.

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 18:15 | 5277351 Son of Captain Nemo
Son of Captain Nemo's picture

"But how accurate is the 85% figure? Depending on the source, Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate has been estimated at as low as 4% and as high as 95%."...

Wonder what kind of "note taking" and direct influence is in place at Langley for building mending walls around the 1% in that Country and standing back when those "walls" no longer can protect the equivalent of Zimbabwe's version(s) of the Bill and Melinda Gates, Larry Ellison(s) the Koch Brother(s) etc... etc...

Guess that's what patent(s) like this one are for!  Ain't Zimbabwe and other African nation(s) just the perfect "test"?!!! They serve multiple benefits as well... Like keeping your #1 business adversary from taking all that "business" from you by other means!

In case of emergency! Break open!!!...

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 18:56 | 5277531 FredFlintstone
FredFlintstone's picture

New BLS Labor Category: Rag Picker

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 18:59 | 5277538 paddyirishman
paddyirishman's picture

typical niggers, they kicked out the productive white farmers who produced something, the niggers are to lazy and stupid to work what is some of the best farmland in the world,it's only over ten years ago that they kicked out most of the white farmers yet a lot of the land has reverted to wilderness, that's our futute as we let the monkey niggers fsa into our countries.

Thu, 10/02/2014 - 00:31 | 5278698 iceCube
iceCube's picture

If that is the case, then it is a pity that the Whities in the US and, say, Ireland, don't lead by example. The US hasn't managed to increase the per capita income of 90% of the population for the past 30 years, hence 24% of the kids are living on food stamps and an astonishing number of people are in jail. Those smart white Irish, on the other hand, ocassionally run their country into the wall and need others to pay for their mismanagement. So, in conclusion, ít isn't really clear to me that the Whites are so much smarter.....

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 22:03 | 5278117 Clowns on Acid
Clowns on Acid's picture

With Obama, Holder (DoJ / IRS), and Jeh Johnston (homeland Security / Immigration) as the 3 most "powerful" men in the US, the comparison with Zimbabwe is palpable. The US has become Africanized by the African Queens. 

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 22:03 | 5278119 Said In CONTEXT
Said In CONTEXT's picture

geeze...Why do things today have to be so damn complicated? "Back in the day," a place under those conditions would have been

quickly surrounded and "sacked" its inhabitants eradicated,its resources plundered and carted off and what was left used to build

a new and better place. And that was during a time when just the logistics of the operation would have been a nightmare...

   But,with today's modern technology, seems the whole operation would be a snap...ask what brown can do for you???

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 22:04 | 5278122 Said In CONTEXT
Said In CONTEXT's picture

geeze...Why do things today have to be so damn complicated? "Back in the day," a place under those conditions would have been

quickly surrounded and "sacked" its inhabitants eradicated,its resources plundered and carted off and what was left used to build

a new and better place. And that was during a time when just the logistics of the operation would have been a nightmare...

   But,with today's modern technology, seems the whole operation would be a snap...ask what brown can do for you???

Wed, 10/01/2014 - 22:09 | 5278142 Said In CONTEXT
Said In CONTEXT's picture

ooopps...dam, double post...

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