24/7 Wall St.

Iceland generally does well according to most socioeconomic measures. Its citizens tend to be healthy, well-paid and content. It’s no surprise that the Scandinavian country has the lowest rate of unemployment based on a new measure published by Gallup.

One of the world’s most prominent research firms calls its yardstick Payroll to Population (P2P):

Gallup’s P2P metric estimates the percentage of the adult population aged 15 and older — not just those currently in the workforce — who are employed full time for an employer for at least 30 hours per week. Gallup does not seasonally adjust its P2P metric. Gallup does not count adults who are self-employed, working part time, unemployed, or out of the workforce as payroll-employed in the P2P metric.

Also near the top of the list are nations in Northerm Europe, which include Sweden, Norway and Finland. Each of these countries strives toward full employment among its citizens. Also near the top are oil-rich UAE and Kuwait. Rounding out the better-off nations, based on Gallup’s poll, are the highly developed countries: the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore and most of the largest nations in the European Union.

A better way to look at the list, which should make sense to most, is joblessness by nation at the bottom. The poorest nations in the world take up every spot: Chad, Yemen, Nigeria, Nepal and Tanzania. Almost all of these have income per person at a level of unimaginable poverty. Most also are plagued by, among other things, drought, war, lots of non-arable land and little industry that could promote a very modest middle class.

Put another way, the nations with the worst unemployment problems lack the tools, political environment or climate to do any better.