Reflex Country study - School of Business and Economics ...

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recovering economy in the years 2004 and 2005. Most of the “REFLEX graduates”
will thus have entered the labour market just before the economies slowed down.
However, we have to keep in mind that indications of the slowdown were already
visible in the second half of the year 2000.
Table 9 provides information on the real GDP growth rates for the REFLEX countries
for the same period. The figures for Japan indicate that the economic downturn
started in this country earlier than in most of the European countries. Moreover, we
see that, even though the Spanish economy slowed down at the beginning of the new
Millennium, Spain continued to have growth rates of around 3%, which is significantly
higher than the EU average at that moment of time. Comparably, the United
Kingdom seemed to have suffered less and the Czech Republic figures indicate a very
short slowdown in 2002 with a strong recovery in the years thereafter.
Table 9
Real GDP growth rates (Percentage change from previous year)
AT BE CH CZ DE ES FI FR IT JP NL NO UK
1995 2.6 2.4 0.4 5.9 2.0 2.8 4.0 1.8 2.9 1.9 3.0 4.4 2.9
1996 2.6 1.1 0.5 4.2 1.0 2.4 3.6 1.0 0.6 2.6 3.0 5.3 2.8
1997 2.2 3.5 1.9 -0.7 1.9 3.9 6.1 2.1 2.0 1.4 3.8 5.2 3.0
1998 3.7 1.7 2.8 -0.8 1.8 4.5 5.2 3.3 1.3 -1.8 4.3 2.6 3.3
1999 3.7 3.3 1.3 1.3 1.9 4.7 3.9 3.0 1.9 -0.2 4.0 2.1 3.0
2000 2.8 3.9 3.6 3.7 3.5 5.0 5.3 4.0 3.8 2.9 3.5 2.8 3.8
2001 0.6 0.7 1.0 2.5 1.4 3.6 2.5 1.8 1.7 0.4 1.4 2.7 2.4
2002 0.5 1.4 0.3 1.9 0.0 2.7 1.6 1.1 0.3 0.1 0.1 1.1 2.1
2003 0.8 1.0 -0.2 3.6 -0.2 3.0 1.9 1.1 0.1 1.8 0.3 1.1 2.7
2004 2.3 2.7 2.3 4.2 0.8 3.2 3.3 2.0 0.9 2.3 2.0 3.1 3.3
2005 2.6 1.5 1.9 6,1 1.1 3.5 3.0 1.2 0.1 2.7 1.5 2.3 1.9
2006 3.2 2.9 3.0 6.2 2.6 3.7 5.0 2.1 1.8 2.8 3.0 2.4 2.6
Source: OECD, 2006 b
To continue, we turn to the employment situation in the REFLEX countries. Table 0
reports on the unemployment rates between 995 and 2006.
For the year 2000, Table 0 shows that the highest unemployment rates are found in
the Mediterranean countries, namely in Spain with 0.8%, in Italy with 0.2% and in
France with 9.4%. A similarly high unemployment rate is found in Finland (9.8%), In
Western Europe, Belgium (6.9%) and Germany (6.8%) have the highest unemployment
rate, followed by the United Kingdom with 5.5%. The lowest rates are found in
the Netherlands (3.0%) and in Switzerland (2.5%),
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