Besides, harmonized or not, doesn't explain the economic weakness in Germany over the past decade compared to the US.
If anything, the US should scale back profits and rebuild its social supports structures, the same structures which were torn down in the name of profit.
>If anything, the US should scale back profits and rebuild its social supports structures, the same structures which were torn down in the name of profit.
All of this sounds like more debt, which if we learned (we haven't) anything from 2008, will not solve the problems, just exacerbate it more when it blows up (again).
... which is meaningless when you compare it to the official US statistics (as you did) because they count things differently. The harmonization helps make the numbers comparable in the first place.
"Harmonised unemployment rates define the unemployed as people of working age who are without work, are available for work, and have taken specific steps to find work. The uniform application of this definition results in estimates of unemployment rates that are more internationally comparable than estimates based on national definitions of unemployment. This indicator is measured in numbers of unemployed people as a percentage of the labour force and it is seasonally adjusted. The labour force is defined as the total number of unemployed people plus those in civilian employment." (https://data.oecd.org/unemp/harmonised-unemployment-rate-hur...)