Europe and America look admiringly at each other's labour markets. Europe's are better at avoiding poverty; America's create far more jobs. Yet both are grappling with a common problem: how to provide a decent standard of living for those who lack marketable skills
             MANY Europeans are bemused by the interest that the Clinton administration is showing in their policies on employment and unemployment. So intrigued by the European model are Bill Clinton and his labour secretary, Robert Reich, that America is hosting a "jobs summit" in Detroit on March 14th-15th--a rare opportunity for labour ministers to share ideas (and limelight). Europe's bemusement is easy to explain. For years America has been far better at creating new jobs and holding aggregate unemployment in check. Europe may have much to learn from America on this subject--but what, you could be forgiven for asking, can Europe teach America?
             Richard Freeman, a professor at Harvard University and director of the labour-economics programme at the National Bureau of Economic Research, agrees that America has been a marvellous job-creation machine. But in an article written for the first issue of New Economy, he points out some drawbacks--which helped to get Mr Clinton elected. (New Economy is published by Britain's Institute for Public Policy Research, a left-leaning think-tank. On the evidence of this issue, which presents economically literate arguments in an accessible way, it deserves to be a great success.)
             The charts show two faces of America's labour market. Chart 1 tracks employment as a proportion of 15-64-year-olds in America and Europe. The proportion of people in employment is less susceptible to confusion and obfuscation than "unemployment". In 1973, as it happens, roughly 65% of the working-age populations in both Europe and America were in work. By the early 1990s the overall employment rate had increased substantially in America (to about 72%) and fallen so...