National job stereotypes need updating

The rich world’s labour market is on a roll. In the past three years, the average unemployment rate in the OECD, a club of mostly wealthy countries, has repeatedly hit historical lows. The employment rate of working-age people is at an all-time high. Not bad in a world of tariffs, geopolitical uncertainty and the threat to jobs from artificial intelligence. Behind the strong aggregate performance lies even more remarkable change. Longstanding stereotypes are melting away.

Over time, many countries have turned from high-unemployment basket cases into job machines. For decades, joblessness in Ireland was notoriously high, prompting people to move to Britain, and then America, in search of work. These days, however, all three countries’ unemployment rates are about the same. By contrast, Chile was once known as a haven of low unemployment. But by the late 2010s, as jobless rates elsewhere fell, its rate came to be among the highest in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.