Factors explaining youth unemployment and early job insecurity in Europe

Unemployment and difficulties integrating young people into the labour market are widely recognized to represent major challenges for the European Union, which is currently facing multiple tasks in this area. Despite ample consideration and suggested convergence policies between EU member states, youth unemployment and early job insecurity remain extensive in many European countries, irrespective of the impact of the financial crisis on their economies. Much action has been taken to decrease youth unemployment, but evidence shows persistently high levels in many European countries, especially since the outbreak of the crisis (Karamessini et al., 2016b). According to Eurostat,1 youth unemployment rates in the EU-28 exceeded 15 per cent in 21 countries in 2015. In the same year there was extremely wide variation in youth unemployment rates across Europe, ranging from 7.2 per cent in Germany and 8.8 per cent in Iceland to 48.3 per cent in Spain and 49.8 per cent in Greece. The problem is evidently far more acute and persistent in some countries than in others. Spain, Greece, Croatia, Italy, Portugal and Cyprus are the countries most affected by the economic crisis, particularly in terms of youth unemployment. Looking at gender differentiations, women exhibited a distinctly higher unemployment rate up until 2007, but after 2008 − as the crisis substantially affected the ‘male’ occupations − male and female unemployment