Youths with nothing to lose are how bloody revolutions start, rarely turning out well for any involved.

I find one thing about the unemployment rate in Europe truly scary:

There are a /lot/ of youths there with nothing to lose.

This is scary, yes. But there's more to any unemployment story than just the stats.

What are the prospects of an unemployed young person getting a job at any point in the future, even when the economy recovers? Is there a strong bias towards new grads, that would lead to a "lost generation" that permanently suffers in the job market? How does society look on the unemployed? Do they look at them with sympathy or scorn?

Lastly, how do the young unemployed feel? Are they angry? Are they carefree? Or are they filled with despair and hopelessness?

It would be great if the US government provided an expedited Visa program for college-educated foreign nationals who have received a job offer from a company in the US. There is H1B, but that applies to specialty occupations. (I'm not an immigration expert - perhaps this already exists and I don't know about it?)

How many people from those countries immigrate to the US or wish to? If they're willing to work, and a company here has offered them a job, I say bring them over!

  Give me your tired, your poor,
  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;
  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
  Send these, the homeless,
  Tempest-tossed to me
  I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

The article mentioned that about 30% are college educated. It would be interesting to look at a breakdown of degrees. For example, many Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics graduates are highly sought after in industry. Additionally, are the degrees reputable from an international perspective and in fields suitable by commerce and industry?

The graphs and the unemployment stats seem to be about people 25 and under, but then when talking about how educated the workforce is, the author talks about 20- and early-30-somethings. The 26 to early 30's part of that stat means it's not directly comparable.

Another quite scary graph: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/im...

I hope it's getting clear to everyone that this is not a "union" anymore..

Interesting, how Germany decoupled itself from the rest of Europe in this graph.

What's a good website to directly target skilled workers in Spain / Greece / Italy / etc? I'm always on the look for good design, code, marketing, writing, really just about anything (even with a little language barrier).

oDesk and similar don't seem to attract what I would consider to be 70% of a country's workforce. Any sense of if they have training / skills?

Where are these people looking for work (online)?

Nobody's hiring in Southern EU countries, because firing is too difficult/expensive there. All the protectionist laws that were meant to keep the employee secure naturally backfired and resulted in a steadily shrinking job market.

Employing someone in EU is like accepting them into a kindergarten, you assume full responsibility for them as if they weren't adults.

Matt Henderson gives an eye-opening first-hand report from Spain here:

http://www.dafacto.com/2011/02/12/the-unfortunate-consequenc...

Allow the employers to fire easily, they will have no problem hiring again.

Just anecdotal stuff,

Friends in Greece who work for the government have not been paid for 6 - 9 months. But they stay in the job for whenever the pay day does come.

Friends in Spain work for cash in hand because their potential employers save money on the various social insurance costs they have to put up, but cannot afford because times are tight.

Local mid size companies are using the down turn as a great excuse to let people go, while pushing their own salary up. (Noted from friends who work in payroll who have access to that kinda info)

The conventional (conservative/economic liberal/libertarian) wisdom is that employers are reluctant to hire new youths because these states mandate so many employer provided protections for any new hires. Employers become risk averse, unwilling to give anyone untested a first shot at the labor market.

Evidence is somewhat mixed based on this chart. The UK has traditionally had lower severance ("redundancy") pay requirements, and is lower on the chart, but close to the EU average. Germany is fairly low on the chart as well, so... maybe youth unemployment is driven more by GDP / worker productivity / promotion of internships / demographics, any number of confounding factors.

The risk of even discussing this idea, even agnostically, is it can beg attacks on the social safety net, so everyone drowns in the quicksand of passionate partisan shouting.

Maybe there's a way to sidestep the traditional arguments and get something out of the discussion. Say we assume the European safety net is non-negotiable, but say we also believe that employee protections may make employers reluctant to hire. Is there a way to implement the same social protections that would blunt the unintended consequences?

News of this kind makes me confused, scared and angry. Confused because of questions like 'Is Government directly responsible for jobs?', 'What is the skill set of the youth?' etc. Scared because the youth have families to feed, they have ambitions and this leads to a rise in suicides among the youth. Angry because the government, due to their poor economic choices, have ruined the dreams of the youth. The government is responsible for providing opportunities and freedom, if not employment. But they fail, for various reasons, including corruption, dirty politics, poor economic choices etc.

Is there a correlation between high-unemployment countries and the availability/quality of off-shore tech labor?

Sure the local market may be in shambles, and the level of effort/risk to bring on new permanent employees may be out of whack. Assuming the talent and drive exists, shouldn't this drive the freelancing segment?

undefined

Usually job growth comes from startups, especially in tough times. If Europe had a stronger startup culture, it could've helped, especially for young people.

it's bad, but not as bad as these stats make it seem.

a lot of those youths do have jobs, but simply are paid cash in hand. when asked, they are unemployed for tax and insurance reasons. as long as illegal immigrant workers are working on the fields of spain, uneomployment simply cannot be that bad.

nobody is starving. roads, bars, stadiums are full. money is circulating in the system. it just is black, untaxed.

Take one look at that graphic and tell me that there is such a thing as "Europe", other than as a continent on a map.