Abstract
Youth continue to face important labour market challenges today, often significantly greater than their adult counterparts. While unemployment rates have fallen in recent years, long-term unemployment remains persistently high as does the share of youth neither in employment nor in education or training. This raises concerns about the consequences of a prolonged joblessness among youth and the role of labour market policies in addressing these challenges. In this context, this chapter presents first, an overview of global youth labour market trends since the economic crisis, focusing on the developments in Europe. Second, the chapter examines the consequences of the current situation in Europe along several dimensions, notably the risk of detachment from the labour market and concerns about job quality. Finally, this chapter discusses valuable lessons learned on the effectiveness of youth labour market policies, using the European Youth Guarantee as a framework for the analysis of more specific measures.
The authors would like to thank Gianni Rosas and colleagues at the ILO Office for the European Union and the Benelux countries for invaluable comments. The authors are also grateful with Pablo Cornide from DG EMP at the EC for valuable observations and suggestions. The opinions expressed in this article and the conclusions drawn are the authors’ and do not necessarily represent the ILO or its policies.
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Notes
- 1.
Youth, unless otherwise stated, refers to persons aged 15–24.
- 2.
In Northern Europe, the youth unemployment rose significantly (to above 20%) but has experienced a stronger recovery in recent years.
- 3.
A more complete description of the implementation process of the European YG is presented in Escudero and López Mourelo (2014).
- 4.
Decision 2005/600/EC of 12 July 2005, OJ L 205, 6.8.2005, p. 21. See also EC (2012a).
- 5.
The starting age of the YG is country specific and depends on the age at completion of compulsory schooling. In Austria, for example, initiatives to ensure early intervention and activation start already on youth in the last 2 years of compulsory schooling (compulsory schooling ends at 15) through activities related to youth coaching.
- 6.
See Chap. 5 for a description of the implementation process of the YG scheme in Finland.
- 7.
Escudero and López Mourelo (2014) and Escudero (2015) describe in detail the effects that each of the interventions included in the YG (namely, training, labour intermediation services, hiring subsidies, public work programmes and start-up incentives) is expected to have according to economic theory.
- 8.
The New Deal programme for young people in England is very similar to the Nordic guarantees.
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Escudero, V., Kühn, S., López Mourelo, E., Tobin, S. (2018). Youth Labour Market Prospects and Recent Policy Developments. In: Malo, M., Moreno Mínguez, A. (eds) European Youth Labour Markets. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68222-8_2
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