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How to read economic figures
To identify trends, you look at the development of an indicator between two moments. But exactly which two moments those are can influence your conclusion considerably. To illustrate, take the fictitious unemployment figures in Figure 1. The most recent figures show that in May of year 2, more than 310,000 people in the Netherlands were looking for paid work. In the same month a year earlier, the figure was 270,000. Judging from this comparison, it is tempting to argue that unemployment is on the rise in Year 2: after all, in that month the Netherlands had 15 percent more unemployment than in Year 1. chart Yet that ... (full story)