Educated unemployment in Europe
Madrid: Alba Mendez, a 24-year-old with a master's degree in sociology, sprang out of bed nervously one recent morning, carefully put on makeup and styled her hair. Her thin hands trembled as she clutched her resume on her way out of the tiny room where a friend allows her to stay rent free.
She had an interview that day for a job at a supermarket. It was nothing like the kind of professional career she thought she would have after finishing her education. But it was a rare flicker of opportunity after a series of temporary positions, applications that went nowhere and employers who increasingly demanded that young people work long, unpaid stretches just to be considered for something permanent.
Her parents were imploring her to return home to the Canary Islands to help run her father's fruit business. It was a sign of the times, though, that even her own father probably would not be able to afford to pay her.
"We're in a situation that is beyond our control," Mendez said. "But that doesn't stop the feelings of guilt. On the bad days, it's really hard to get out of bed. I ask myself, 'What did I do wrong?'"
It is a question being asked by millions of young Europeans. Five years after the economic crisis struck the Continent, youth unemployment has climbed to staggering levels in many countries: in September, 56 percent in Spain for those 24 and younger, 57 percent in Greece, 40 percent in Italy, 37 percent in Portugal and 28 percent in Ireland. For people 25 to 30, the rates are half to two-thirds as high and rising.
Those are Great Depression-like rates of unemployment, and there is no sign that European economies, still barely emerging from recession, are about to generate the jobs necessary to bring them into the work force soon, perhaps in their lifetimes.
Dozens of interviews with young people around the Continent reveal a creeping realization that the European dream their parents enjoyed is out of reach. It is not that Europe will never recover, but that the era of recession and austerity has persisted for so long that new growth, when it comes, will be enjoyed by the next generation, leaving this one out.
George Skivalos, 28, had to move back in with his mother two years ago in Athens, Greece.
"Even if we get out of the crisis, maybe in four years, I'll be 32, and then what?" Skivalos said. "I will have missed the opportunity to be in a company with upward mobility."
Instead, many in the troubled south are carving out a simple existence for themselves in a new European reality. They must decide whether to stay home, with the protection of family but a dearth of jobs. Or they can travel to Europe's north, places where work is possible to find but where they are likely to be treated as outsiders. There, young people say, they compete for low-paying, temporary jobs but are sometimes excluded from the cocoon of full employment.
For the European Union, addressing the issue has become a political as well as an economic challenge at a time of expanding populist discontent with the leadership in Brussels and national capitals.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has called youth unemployment "the most pressing problem facing Europe." Merkel flew to Paris on Tuesday to join other European leaders at a special youth unemployment summit meeting called by President Francois Hollande of France. Governments renewed a pledge for an employment-promotion program worth 6 billion euros (about $8 billion) starting next year... read more:
http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/young-and-educated-in-europe-but-desperate-for-jobs-447489?pfrom=home-topstories
Out of Europe’s Long Jobs Crisis, Voices of the Young
She had an interview that day for a job at a supermarket. It was nothing like the kind of professional career she thought she would have after finishing her education. But it was a rare flicker of opportunity after a series of temporary positions, applications that went nowhere and employers who increasingly demanded that young people work long, unpaid stretches just to be considered for something permanent.
Her parents were imploring her to return home to the Canary Islands to help run her father's fruit business. It was a sign of the times, though, that even her own father probably would not be able to afford to pay her.
"We're in a situation that is beyond our control," Mendez said. "But that doesn't stop the feelings of guilt. On the bad days, it's really hard to get out of bed. I ask myself, 'What did I do wrong?'"
It is a question being asked by millions of young Europeans. Five years after the economic crisis struck the Continent, youth unemployment has climbed to staggering levels in many countries: in September, 56 percent in Spain for those 24 and younger, 57 percent in Greece, 40 percent in Italy, 37 percent in Portugal and 28 percent in Ireland. For people 25 to 30, the rates are half to two-thirds as high and rising.
Those are Great Depression-like rates of unemployment, and there is no sign that European economies, still barely emerging from recession, are about to generate the jobs necessary to bring them into the work force soon, perhaps in their lifetimes.
Dozens of interviews with young people around the Continent reveal a creeping realization that the European dream their parents enjoyed is out of reach. It is not that Europe will never recover, but that the era of recession and austerity has persisted for so long that new growth, when it comes, will be enjoyed by the next generation, leaving this one out.
George Skivalos, 28, had to move back in with his mother two years ago in Athens, Greece.
"Even if we get out of the crisis, maybe in four years, I'll be 32, and then what?" Skivalos said. "I will have missed the opportunity to be in a company with upward mobility."
Instead, many in the troubled south are carving out a simple existence for themselves in a new European reality. They must decide whether to stay home, with the protection of family but a dearth of jobs. Or they can travel to Europe's north, places where work is possible to find but where they are likely to be treated as outsiders. There, young people say, they compete for low-paying, temporary jobs but are sometimes excluded from the cocoon of full employment.
For the European Union, addressing the issue has become a political as well as an economic challenge at a time of expanding populist discontent with the leadership in Brussels and national capitals.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has called youth unemployment "the most pressing problem facing Europe." Merkel flew to Paris on Tuesday to join other European leaders at a special youth unemployment summit meeting called by President Francois Hollande of France. Governments renewed a pledge for an employment-promotion program worth 6 billion euros (about $8 billion) starting next year... read more:
http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/young-and-educated-in-europe-but-desperate-for-jobs-447489?pfrom=home-topstories
Out of Europe’s Long Jobs Crisis, Voices of the Young
