September 12, 2002 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Employment growth in the G7 countries: 1960–2000

Among the G7 industrial economies—the United States, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom—the U.S. average annual employment growth rate of 1.8 percent over the 1960–2000 period was surpassed only by Canada’s 2.3 percent per year.

 

[Chart data—TXT]

While the United States maintained its relatively high employment growth rate (2.0 percent) during both 1960–73 and 1973–90, the pace tapered off in Canada and Japan in the latter period. 

Although lower than the 2-percent growth rate of the previous period, the U.S. annual employment growth rate of 1.3 percent in 1990–2000 was about 4 times as high as the rates for Japan and Europe (G4), and nearly equal to the rate for Canada, the perennial employment growth leader among the G7 countries.

These data are a product of the Foreign Labor Statistics program. Europe (G4) consists of France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Find out more in "U.S. labor market performance in international perspective," by Constance Sorrentino and Joyanna Moy, Monthly Labor Review, June 2002.