Euro, Crisis and Unemployment: Youth Patterns, Youth Policies?

Arbeitspapier

This paper examines the occurrence of structural breaks in European unemployment associated with major events experienced by the European economies at an institutional level: the creation of the European and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999, and the Euro/financial crisis in 2008-2009, which was followed by a general and intensive reform process in the years afterwards. Beyond the well documented asymmetries across countries, we uncover different responses of adult and youth unemployment rates. While adult unemployment is more prone to experience structural breaks, youth unemployment is more sensitive to business cycle oscillations. This has been especially so in the recent crisis and calls for fine tuning policy measures specifically targeted to youth unemployed in bad times. One important implication of our findings is that generic labour market reforms are not effective enough to solve the youth unemployment problem across Europe. We point to educational policies that raise average qualifications and help school-to-work transitions as suitable complementary cures.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 9952

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search ; Economywide Country Studies: Europe ; Labor Economics Policies ; Economic Impacts of Globalization: Labor
• Subject: unemployment ; structural breaks ; crisis ; Eurozone ; youth ; education

Contributors, Location and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Ghoshray, Atanu ; Ordóñez, Javier ; Sala, Hector
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2016

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/142391
• Last update: 20.09.2024, 8:23 AM CEST