Unemployment rates in Western Europe, the U.S. and Japan in select periods 1960-1990

A series of recessions in the 1970s and 1980s meant that unemployment rates in some Western European countries rose to their highest levels since the Great Depression in the 1930s. While countries such as West Germany closed out the period of prosperity (known as the "Golden Age of Capitalism") with unemployment rates below one percent, figures rose gradually in the 1970s, and then furthermore in the 1980s. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the highest levels of unemployment in the listed countries were observed in Ireland and the United States; although the highest levels of unemployment in the 1980s were observed in Spain, during its transition to democracy. Of the major economic powers listed here, Japan saw the least amount of fluctuation, with a high of just 2.5 percent in the given periods; almost half of the U.S.' lowest unemployment figure in these periods.