That's the same anywhere in the world. But are they measuring apples for apples? Or are they taking the DRs lowest legal wage and measuring it against the "average minimum" in other countries?
There was a time when certain international institutions would take the officially published unemployment rates of each country and compare them on a list. Year after year the DR would be among the lowest on the list (highest unemployment.) It didn’t matter if there was a crisis or a boom, DR always appeared to have the worst.
After reviewing how the central banks of many of the countries on the list arrived to their figures, it turns our they were using the open unemployment rate (which is the one used as the official unemployment rate by most countries) while the DR was using the amplified unemployment rate.
The DR central bank measured both types od unemployment rates, so it wss a very simple publishing the other as the official so the comparisons would be valid. Something so simple and yet they made it so hard. I sent a letter (more like a long email) to the Central Bank explaining that all the unemployment comparisons with other countries were not valod because it was basically comparing apples to oranges. Their response? They choose the amplified unemployment to be more “realistic” and they would not change it because it would cause a credibility problem.
Afterwards, I decided to post about the unemployment figure issue in a blog I was working on at the time. A few months later the same issue I presented in the blog article I began to see by various other Dominican economists in several Dominican TV programs. Many times they were saying word-for-word what I said in the blog, which was written when I was still an economics student.
In one of the years of Danilo the change was finally made by the Central Bank and it created no credibility issue, the opposing political parties didn’t took it for their political propaganda against the then PLD, and the international comparisons began to show the obvious, the DR didn’t have the worst unemployment rate in Latin America when the comparison is apple-to-apple.
Several of the Dominican economists that appeared on Dominican TV contacted me about various articles through the years including Hatton who was the only economist to basically say reality was the complete opposite that my article said.
All the data I was using were the official ones published by the Central Bank, but at that time the PLD was in power and he was publicly known to be a PRD member and supporter. The PRD split creating the PRM which one the last presidential election. Luis Abinader assigns him to a position regarding the economy and suddenly he didn’t find anything to complaint about. The Central Bank is now headed by the same guy that headed the CB during the PLD. Why is it he argued reality was different when he was out of power and then that the CB reflects reality once in power?
Abinader moved him to another ministry thst has very little to do with the economy. Hmm, why did he do that of Hatton was so sure the CB data was fake? Didn’t had much to do once he realized there is nothing fake of the CB data?
I’m still speechless how is it that someone that wasn’t yet an economist at the time detect something that none of the top economists of the country even mentioned in their articles, interviews, etc until I brought it up. Even then I got a bs response only to see years later the change applied and nothing happened.
www.diariolibre.com
