OECD unemployment rates show long swings which dominate shorter business cycle components and these long swings show a range of common patterns. Using a panel of 21 OECD countries 1960-2002, we estimate the common factor that drives unemployment by the first principal component. This factor has...

A medium-term relationship exists between share prices, normalised by labour productivity, and the rate of unemployment in the OECD countries. A similar relationship appears to exist between unemployment and house prices. This helps explain decadal changes in mean unemployment, such as the shift...