
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 23, 1994                   TAG: 9401220043
SECTION: ECONOMY                    PAGE: EC-18   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BERNARD D. KAPLAN HEARST NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: PARIS                                LENGTH: Medium

EUROPE ENVIES U.S. ABILITY TO CREATE JOBS

President Clinton told European leaders this month in Brussels that the world's "wealthy nations all have the same difficulty in creating jobs."

But statistics show that he's plainly wrong.

The United States has been much more successful in both the creation of new jobs and in maintaining those that already exist than other Western industrial countries.

Europe's unemployment crisis is more severe than was America's even in the depths of the U.S. recession. Furthermore, as nearly all European authorities concede, the job problem promises to get worse before it starts getting better.

According to the most recent prediction by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, at least 22 million people in Western Europe, 13 percent of the work force, will be out of a job by the end of this year, compared with 18 million now. In some countries, unemployment is above 20 percent.

Clinton may merely have been polite to his European hosts. If so, he needn't have bothered. European officials and economists fully acknowledge America's superior record on employment and have been searching diligently for clues on how to emulate it.

French economist Paul-Roger Brillat claimed it was hard to believe that Clinton isn't aware of how much the rest of the world envies the U.S. capacity for churning out jobs even at a time when many major companies have heavily cut their work forces.

He noted the recent forecast by the National Association of Manufacturers that more than 1 million jobs will be created in 1994 in the U.S. manufacturing sector alone.

"European governments would give their eyeteeth to be able to hold out such a prospect," he said. "In 1994, there is certain to be a further net loss of jobs here.

"Even most European champions of state intervention now accept that over-regulation and overprotection discourages the creation of new jobs," Brillat said. "However reluctantly, many agree that they must model the European system more closely on the less-restrictive and more-open U.S. labor market."

by CNB