Unemployment remained steady in the euro area at 8.3% of the labour force in June.
If unemployment benefits keep those people in the labour force, the savings could be substantial.
Using the Labour Force Survey (LFS) definition of unemployment, the overall rate here is 7.6%.
About a quarter were working part-time and just under a quarter had left the labour force.
By making it easier for women to work, it boosts the size of the labour force.
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Employing more, but less productive, workers lowers the average skill level of the labour force.
That, however, was not the case in January when the labour force grew by 250, 000.
But much of this is simply a way of withdrawing potential workers from the labour force.
At the same time, the structure of the labour force may lessen the pain.
Migrants are all the more needed because so few women are in the labour force.
In America the unemployment rate stands at 8.3% of the labour force, its 1983 level.
Ever more low-skilled white American men have left the labour force, many moving onto disability rolls.
The labour force is some 6m smaller now than it would be had participation remained at 2007 levels.
Barely more than 4% of the working-age population is jobless, and inward immigration is expanding the labour force.
Over 60% of poor families have at least one person in the labour force some of the time.
At the same time more productivity will have to be squeezed out of the labour force that remains.
"We need to reduce taxes on the labour force, both on workers and companies, by cutting spending, " he said.
Retirements will take 12m college-educated workers out of the labour force by 2030.
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Since the start of 2008 the labour force has not grown at all.
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America has a smaller fraction of prime-age men in work and in the labour force than any other G7 economy.
The Labour Force Survey of unemployment for November 2011 to January 2012 is also below the UK rate of 8.4%.
Unless a greater number of older workers stays in the labour force, wages are likely to be bid up sharply.
Whereas in 1994 non-regular workers accounted for only 19% of the labour force, the figure has since risen to 33%.
In the same month, Japan's unemployment rate fell to 4.6% of the labour force, down from 5.1% a year earlier.
In the latest crisis older workers have lost their jobs, but they have not dropped out of the labour force.
If so, some of the 5.1m Americans she thinks are missing from the labour force may be gone for good.
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Its decline from a peak of 10% in October 2009 has been helped by unusually stagnant growth in the labour force.
So the next line of defence against hysteresis is to keep the jobless in the labour force, actively looking for work.
But much of the gap represents permanent departures from the labour force because of early retirement or workers going on disability benefit.
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