The Youth Employment Crisis

In countries severely affected by the global financial crisis, youth unemployment has reached staggering proportions. To have four out of every ten young people unemployed is a social and economic catastrophe. The global financial crisis has aggravated the pre-existing “crisis before the crisis”. Across the world, young women and men face real and increasing difficulty in finding decent work. Over the last two decades, youth unemployment on average has remained at three times that of adult unemployment and, in some regions, this proportion is now as high as five times the adult rate. The spirit of youth protests soon reverberated throughout several of the industrialized countries that had been most affected by the economic crisis. In Spain the indignados movement and its occupation of the Puerta del Sol square in Madrid, mobilized youth across the country in protest against the handling of the economic crisis by the political establishment and the ensuing catastrophic rise of youth unemployment. A central demand of the movement was for more participatory forms of democracy, reflecting the younger generation’s sense of alienation and economic and social exclusion. The movement soon spread to other European countries, in particular Greece, where the protests were initially directed against the austerity programme.

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