I will start by giving my own explanation as follows: To have a stable job or, alternatively, to live in a country with good employment opportunities, represents a crucial step in the life of any youth. Of course, to have a job is a necessary but not sufficient condition of economic independence. Unfortunately, during the last twenty years most European young people have experienced a deterioration of their position in the labour market compared to that of adult counterparts.

But, even more significantly, with the exception of the United Kingdom, employment rates of people of people in Europe aged 15-24 are much owner and, as a consequence, unemployment rates are much higher than those regarding people aged 25-64. Education and gender affect employment and the risks and duration of unemployment among European youths. Generally speaking, better-educated young people display higher employment rates. They also show lower risks of unemployment and a shorter duration of unemployment spells.

Educational qualifications play a much smaller role in determining the speed of finding a first job. With the exception of the United Kingdom, young European women are even less likely to enter the labour market and more prone to unemployment, as in the past, young people at the beginning of their working careers earn less than adults with greater work experience. Moreover, income from work increases as young people become older. The problem is that the earnings of youths relative to adults are falling across in many EU countries.

The relative economic deprivation of young people is exacerbated by the increasing rates of unemployment and the lower generosity of the government welfare system. In some EU countries unemployment benefits for people looking for their first job have been reduced, or rules have been made stricter making economic harder.

At any rate socialprotection measures in most EU countries favour young people less than adult or elderly individuals.

PREFERED SOLUTIONS:

1. Self-employment support represents another interesting measure to help young people find a job. Some interesting measures intended to help young people in moving to self-employment can be found in Sweden and Italy.
2. On the basis of available knowledge, it seems that training programmes based on alternation of work experience and vocational education in specific institutions are the most suitable and effective tools for increasing the chances of an acceptable transition from school to work.
3. Policies aimed at removing Payroll costs of new labour market entrants have proved to be rather effective. Rates of youth aggregate unemployment can further be reduced by policies affecting the labour market’s “supply side”. In this case that measures reducing the level of unemployment benefits for young people, or introducing tougher laws for benefits, could be acceptable if two conditions are met: increasing and improving placement, counseling, guidance and training services and extending unemployment benefits to people looking for their first job. Of course, the extension of support for youth self-employment could also be useful, at least in national economies in which small firms prevail over larger ones.
4. A third and extremely important common EU goal regarding youth positions in the labour market should be the Reduction of gender difference. At this time, i want to express the fact this topic is a vital issue in among the european countries, and it should be given a prompt attention.

…is that the education in most universities and the requirements of the companies pass each other. There is lack of practical training in the universities and that’s what companies want and expect from their future employees. And also finding a new job without at least a basic knowledge of English and one or two more foreign languages is likely to be very difficult. Some students are just unsure how to articulate the skills they have and how to present themselves, where to look for a job – all this things you can not learn in a university, or not in our universities.

There are three overall factors on the European level for why the labor market seems to deter young people. There is a lack of adequate regulations, harmonization thereof and deregulation, there is a lack of political will to enforce the legal framework we already have and there is a lack of the metal preparedness to look for cross-border jobs.

To remedy the lack of flexibility I believe accordingly that the European Institutions have to be more progressive and daring when it comes to legal interventions promoting the free movement of citizens. Especially the Commission should work more proactively in designing new legislation and, maybe more important, proposing it in an attractive way to the legislative Institutions and communicating it to the public in a comprehensive manner.

On the other side, the legislators at the European level have to become bolder in passing regulation that might intrude in the traditionally national sphere of governance but that nevertheless promotes free movement of the increasing number of young mobile and unemployed people of Europe. The time is gone, when national leaders comfortably could refer to the alleged public opinion in their home countries as a pretext not to adopt Commission proposals. Firstly, the national opinion in its hermetic form is no longer. Opinion today is formed in a much broader context. Secondly, political leaders have to make more effort to present the problems and the suggested solutions in a language that everyone understands.

Finally, we all have to contribute in mobilizing awareness of the potentials that lie inherent in the area of freedom, justice and security. We must continue to discuss and exchange ideas in order to gradually making people prepared to go over borders to realize their dreams. This is the part will require the most time. However, I believe that it is also the part that will be the most rewarding in a long term perspective.

It may seem that it is particularly hard to give a general answer to this question. What can be identical in the situation of young Western Europeans that can not get a job and young Eastern Europeans, if young Eastern Europeans come over and find a suitable post? In Eastern Europe there is in general younger, cheaper, but less educated labour force. So can we talk about at least similar situation? We can, because trends are similar in the whole Europe, or better sad in the whole European Union. What are these? Less paid and rather simple jobs will be take over by immigrants (this means also Eastern European in Western Europe nowadays), as natives are not interested in making an effort for low wages.

Many posts will be moved to developing countries as for many years the labour force will be cheaper there. People will work longer in their old days in order to prevent the social security system from collapsing. Technology will continue to develop exchanging further human posts with automotive solutions. As a result of all that number of jobs for young people will decrease. We will have to accept either lower wages or higher expectations. But our jobs will not be secured. There is going to be little stability in our lives. In order to earn money we will need to change post, places, businesses etc. Still it seems to me that the situation is going to be much more difficult for the next generations.

I think that for most young people the problem with finding job is lying in fact, that now companies are looking for employees with experience. young people who are just from studies or school dont have this experience, unless they have had traineeship in their school during the studies. so i think here is like a circle, that if you dont have experience you dont get job, but if you dont have job, you cant get experience too.. to solve this problem could as i mentioned before, schools, by including in their programs traineeships, so that students can have not only theory but as well a practical basis for their studies and experience too, which can help, when they will seriously search for work.

Another problem, which is common in my country, but i believe the same situation is in all post-USSR countries, that you cant find job if you dont have good relations. meaning that unless you have somebody who knows somebody in a potential work place, you cannot get this job. Now it is getting better, but it is still a problem too.

If it is the case of unemployment in Europe; I think the reason is the improvement of technology, especially in information technologies, electronics and machinery. Just, think that you are working as a documentation officer. This used to be a very time consuming job because one needed to search all the documents one by one, but now it is just one ‘click’ and the database presents you all the info you need. Maybe before, a company used to need 3-4 persons to handle the job but now 1 or 2.

Let’s take a country with the stable working population of 20 million and also assume that the unemployment rate is 0%. This economy has a stable annual growth rate of 2-3 %. Now, after the improvements in technology let’s make the assumption that one person can do the work of 2 persons. So, there will be only works for 1/2 of 20, which means 10 million. Then let’s think about new work areas brought by the technological improvements and also add the new jobs due to economical growth. Then let’s say that you could manage to place 9 million to new jobs but still 1 million is left and your unemployement rate has increased 5%.

That is a static and rough calculation based on assumptions of course but it still gives a logical idea about the reasons. I do believe that either brand new working domains should be created or the growth of economy should be increased. But of course it is a very complicated system and the key factor to solve this problem is good management. Good management of companies and also good management of the govenment when we think in bigger scale.

That is the only idea came to my mind in the case of Europe but I am looking forward to learn about the other ideas.

But there is one more thing to do; a social and an idealistic one… The owners of the companies can accept to decrease their profits in order to offer jobs for more people. They can still divide one person’s job into two and can employ two instead of one. This would give the persons opportunity to be less exhausted and meanwhile a second person would earn money to look after himself and/or his family. Of course this would bring some more cost load to the budget of the company but if it is affordable why not. This would absolutely help to decrease the stress in public life.

Looking into the issue in European context we do come to a paradox because it is a common knowledge that the continent is ageing and the society needs more and more people to work and pay taxes. So, theoretically everyone should welcome young people with open arms on the labour market.

Yet, that is not how it goes. I think the inadequacy comes mainly from the limited capabilities of the education system. The needs of the labour market change fast and unpredictably. In order to change the education system we need time-consuming initiative, reforms, lobbying etc. And there is no effective way to make sure these changes are always in accordance with the requirements of employers. Often enough education lacks practical aspects or up to date knowledge.

The question of academic education versus vocational education has also been discussed broadly, but few practical conclusions have been drawn. Prestigious high-salary jobs achievable through university degrees are preferred by youth while vocational careers offer a greater chance of being employed. It results in high unemployment rates among highly educated people and no one doing your plumbing, for example.

But we can’t put the blame entirely on education. The young themselves make wrong career-related decisions… The employers don’t always have confidence in young job seekers’ capabilities… The public sector isn’t always helping…

To begin with, one is capable to get a pension in a quite old age, for example in Greece it’s 65, that mean that job positions are occupied and youngsters cant get job. That together with the fact that there are ‘life-time learning’ education and training seminars the employee who is 50 have the same knowledge with a person who just finished university. Then, the standards and qualifications have risen.

For small countries like mine, earlier before a uni degree with knowledge of English was fine, but nowadays you have to have postgraduate studies and you have to know 2 or maybe 3 foreign languages. Other thing is that sometimes young people won’t settle to do one work but continue searching for a work that will fill their aspirations, that is that they want a job to pay good, work less or maybe a work to enjoy spending your time, some people wont realize you need to start from low to get high and have your wishes come true!

I know, that my faculty in university will not support me well enough to find a job, the future job prospective is really small, that’s how i know that i have to get postgraduate studies, which cost a lot and students many times cant afford them, so those who can get the job positions and the rest of them search!

A huge majority of job offers demand at least one (if not several) long university studies, AND professional experience. However it is hard to manage to do traineeships and university at the same time. There is also, in countries like France, a real difference between those who have been to the ‘grandes écoles’, who never have any problem finding a job in France, and those who have been to uni. I think that nowadays, to get a job, you need to have a professional formation giving you access to low-paid jobs, or a long course and a lot of patience.

In France (to talk about what I know), the system is quite hypocritical, because even with the selection, most people who reach a very high level of studies in humanities, psychology, etc. have to end up working in a fast food for a few years. Perhaps the selection should be more difficult to get through. The problems come from the fact that some sectors are completely ‘saturated’, I don’t know how we could find a solution for that.

They don’t find a job because they don’t search for a job. The majority of Youth are not willing to search for a job because they either are full time students or they like spending their parents money. According to my point of view, responsible for this situation are also the parents because they tend to spoil their children providing them with everything they need. If they didn’t behave like this, then at least young Europeans would have tried to find a job just to cover their pocket money expenses. Unfortunately when I become a parent I will do the same to spoil my children because every parent wants the best for his heirs. I also think that there might be unemployment in the small and poor provinces of the EU because there are not many jobs that can be done by students. In any case I strongly believe that if someone wants badly a job he will find one. Till the next Your Say … have fun!