What happens to employment if exports change?
We are glad to announce the new* jobs calculator of the Data portal for agro-economic Modelling (DataM)
With this tool you can play with the mouse to simulate changes of exports for products or services while dynamic charts will show you real-time the impact on employment in the different fields of the economics.
This simulator is initially released for 30+ countries (including all EU + some Africans**), here listed with the direct access to the individual dashboard:
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Ethiopia, EU-27 (2020) (available from 14/02/2020), EU-28 [Set EU Members 1/7/2013-31/1/2020] (available from 14/02/2020) , Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Senegal (available from 12/05/2020), Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom,
The tool is not a crystal ball!
Please do NOT interpret results as an accurate forecast of job creation!
Please take results as an indication of the different potential that commodities have in the employment in the different sectors.
Mechanism - main theoretical concepts
The tool allows to simulate exogenous shocks in the final demand for the selected commodities, and the jobs generated are the sum of direct, indirect and induced effects (calculated after infinite feedbacks).
Shocks can be introduced in several sectors at the same time. The results show both the variation in jobs for each of the sectors of activity concerned and the aggregate variation (total jobs, jobs in the main productive sector of the commodity, jobs in the other sectors).
The tool is a practical application of the scientific studies that calculated the "Social Accounting Matrices" (SAMs) for the involved countries:
Be cautious!
The calculations are based on the assumption that external trade, investment and public expenditure are exogenous (not model-dependent), therefore the demand shock may refer to either of these variables (although the shock in percentage term is performed, for sake of simplicity, only as a reference to current exports).
The results are subject to several assumptions such as: constant prices and fixed technology production functions (Leontief type) and do not take into account variations or changes in other socio-economic variables.
This is why results should never be interpreted as accurate forecasts of job creation, but rather as indication of which commodities have the highest employment potential and in which sectors.
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(*) This simulator is a new version of the On-line Jobs Calculator launched on April 2019, that had a limited interactivity, results only in tabular format, and that worked only for EU.
(**) Our Country Dashboards are now integrating a link to the jobs calculator when available for the given Country; i.e.: Ethiopia and Kenya; Senegal published on 12/05/2020.
