America No Longer Has Lower Unemployment than Europe

European Unemployment in July 2010, US rate was 9.5% and Japan's was 5.2%

American's used to feel superior to Europeans because their social safety net supported a higher level of unemployment and general laziness -- laziness that was not tolerated in the more laissez faire America with its rough and tough economics.

In July European unemployment and American unemployment were the same on average at 9.6%. Key countries had far lower rates like Netherlands at 4.4%, Germany at 6.9%, and the UK at 7.8%. The US can still feel superior to France at 10.0% and Estonia at 20.3%.

The twenty-seven EU countries and their abbreviations are Belgium (BE), Bulgaria (BG), the Czech Republic (CZ), Denmark (DK), Germany (DE), Estonia (EE), Ireland (IE), Greece (EL), Spain (ES), France (FR), Italy (IT), Cyprus (CY), Latvia (LV), Lithuania (LT), Luxembourg (LU), Hungary (HU), Malta (MT), the Netherlands (NL), Austria (AT), Poland (PL), Portugal (PT), Romania (RO), Slovenia (SI), Slovakia (SK), Finland (FI), Sweden (SE) and the United Kingdom (UK).

Of course the cause of this is the "Great Recession," and the depression in housing prices. Ordinarily shockingly low interest rates would spur housing construction across the country, but not this time. There are way too many existing, empty houses.

America needed housing to pull it out of recessions, and this time housing was not there.