Its labour market has historically been flexible, with wages adjusting fairly readily to changes in unemployment.
The relationship between economic growth and changes in unemployment doesn't seem to have changed in recent years.
In the early nineteen-seventies, Martin Feldstein, of Harvard, showed how changes in unemployment benefits had a big impact on labor supply.
One study by a political scientist estimated that the impact of changes in unemployment was 27 times greater than the impact of equivalent changes in gas prices.
This is at odds with what economists refer to as Okun's law, a rough but empirically regular connection between changes in GDP and changes in unemployment.
And comparisons with other central banks, and other countries, go only so far because monetary policy is only one factor that influences changes in unemployment.
What happens to gross domestic product tends to have less of an impact on voting intentions than changes in unemployment and house prices, and here the signs of recovery have been evident for several months.
The accompanying charts show the changes in unemployment in nine countries, as well as for the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as a group.
Just a quick note on a question that comes up in some comments: why do I sometimes look at percentage changes in unemployment, sometimes at changes in absolute levels?
In a study of 21 rich countries since the 1960s, the IMF shows that changes in unemployment now influence inflation much less than in the past (see right-hand chart).
If nothing else were happening, and there were no inflation, no changes in unemployment or exchange rates, and the country were to have a constant population of all ages, then the government's fiscal position, or stance, might be said to be neutral (neither expansionary nor contractionary) if spending were an exact match of taxation, charges, and profits on public sector activities.
