Young, qualified and jobless: how EU unemployment is defining the Millennial generation

#ijf15 | @micheleazzu | @mapaone | @peggycorlin

Ho lavorato come baby sitter ogni mattina svegliandomi alle 5.30 per essere a lavoro alle 7.00. Staccavo alle 15.00, tornavo a casa, cibo, studio e alle 18.00 a lezione fino le 21.30. A quel punto tornare a casa e preparare la cena, doccia, chiamare il mio ragazzo che vive in Sardegna (lui è tornato a casa dei suoi per poter lavorare riuscendo a mettere qualcosa da parte) o la famiglia e poi a letto. E di nuovo, tutto da capo. Dopo cinque anni di studi e numerose esperienze lavorative ancora non riesco a farmi pagare per un servizio fotografico.


“Lo stage è segnalato all’università, quindi credo tu abbia dei crediti”. Ah, sì. I 3 crediti che ho già ottenuto al primo anno, con un seminario di un’ora a settimana. Insomma, per quei tre crediti che già ho dovrei

recarmi a dieci chilometri da casa, cambiando i programmi della famiglia (perché la patente ce l’ho, ma l’auto no). E spendere più di 70 euro al mese in abbonamenti per Milano. E, quindi, alla fine, la settimana di

prova resta una prova.


“Io avrei voluto davvero non farli ‘sti 30 giorni di malattia, ho provato a rifiutarli ma per legge sono obbligato a non andare al lavoro”, spiega. Il fatto, spiega Mario, mentre continua a parlare, è che essendo il suo

primo anno di lavoro in quell’azienda, e conoscendo le dinamiche di quel posto, teme che questo mese di fermo obbligatorio possa costargli il posto, al rinnovo del contratto fra pochi mesi. “C’è una mole di lavoro impressionante e io li lascio così… spero davvero che non influisca ma sono un po’ preoccupato“, mi dice.


È come avere una doppia vita. I weekend non esci per lavorare, non hai un giorno libero. Delle volte, dopo 8 ore di lavoro, torni a casa e ti metti sui libri. Anche in fila al centro per l’impiego mi ero portata da studiare. Alla fine sono quasi

contenta di aver perso il lavoro, perché non mi era mai capitato di poter fare solo la studentessa. Certo… e se fra qualche mese non riesco a trovare lavoro? E con quanti mesi di ritardo mi versano l’Aspi?


Mi propongono un contratto full time per il quale avrei percepito quasi lo stesso stipendio del precedente part time. C’era poco da discutere: avevo bisogno di quel lavoro. Sono tornata a Roma senza un soldo,

avendo perso la stagione estiva fidandomi della promessa di un contratto, senza un lavoro e con un affitto da pagare. Ora, nove mesi dopo ancora invio curriculum – non so quante centinaia ne ho inviati finora – in

cerca di un lavoro.


World’s “Ticking bomb”

• Commons International Development Committee (IDC) report: 600 million young people competing for a predicted 200 million jobs over the next decade”

• ILO: The challenge of bringing unemployment back to pre-crisis levels “now appears as daunting a task as ever”


• ILO director general, Guy Ryder, said: “More than 61 million jobs have been lost since the start of the global crisis in 2008 and our projections show that unemployment will continue to rise until the end of the decade

• By 2019, more than 212 million people will be out of work, up from 201 million now, according to the ILO’s report, World Employment and Social Outlook – Trends 2015


Not EU• US - The nation is poised to lose $18 billion in

wages over the next decade due to high youth unemployment, according to a Bloomberg Brief from Senior Economist Joseph Brusuelas. Brusuelas estimated that about 1.3 million 16- to 24-year-olds have been unemployed for six months or more. He came to the $18 billion figure using earlier research (…) Still, the problem of lost wages due to unemployment could actually be much worse, Brusuelas told The Huffington Post. It isn’t just low-skill jobs that account for the 16.8% underemployment rate for young college graduates. (10% YU general)


EU 2007 to 2013

• Between 2007 and 2013, youth unemployment reached record highs across Europe, dramatically increasing from 15.7% to 23.4% according to Eurostat


EU• Over 5 million young people (under 25) were unemployed in the EU-28 area in the second

quarter of 2014. • This represents an unemployment rate of 21.7% (23.2% in the euro area). This is more than

twice as high as the adult unemployment rate (9.0%). • 7.5 million young Europeans between 15 and 24 are neither in employment, nor in education

or training (NEETs). • 12% of the 18-24 year old population are early school leavers. • In the last four years, the overall employment rates for young people fell three times as much

as for adults. • The gap between the countries with the highest and the lowest jobless rates for young

people is extremely high. There is a gap of nearly 50 percentage points between the EU country with the lowest rate of youth unemployment (Germany at 7.8% in July 2014) and with the EU country with the highest rate, Spain (53.8% in July 2014). Spain is followed by Greece (53.1% in May 2014), Italy (42.9%), Croatia (41.5%), Portugal (35.5%) and Cyprus (35.1% in June 2014).

(source: EU Commission)


#ijf15

We don’t know

• FMI: "Despite the increasing policy focus on youth unemployment, there is relatively little analysis of the nature and drivers of this phenomenon”.

• UK Parliament: “Measuring young people’s participation in the labour market is particularly difficult because of the complex way in which education and the labour market interact ”


Stock factor

• "Youth unemployment rates are, on average, almost three times as sensitive to output growth as adult unemployment rates. This relationship holds true in every country, notwithstanding wide variations in employment dynamics across countries"


Flow factor

• "Our analysis confirms that higher labor costs—that is, a larger tax wedge and/or minimum wages relative to the median wage—are associated with higher youth and adult unemployment rates”


Duality

• (IMF) “The unequal distribution of unemployment and its unusual concentration among youth in some countries in part reflects dysfunctional labor market institutions, namely the dual employment protection systems. This is why the IMF has recommended the reduction of duality in a number of countries, particularly Italy, Portugal, and Spain"


“Statistical tricks”• IMF: The trends look worrisome, no matter

how youth unemployment is measured. Some have argued that is merely a statistical artifact due to the smaller size of the youth labor force that occurs because younger people dip in and out of the labor force while pursuing their education. Indeed, the headline numbers do vary significantly depending on whether the incidence of unemployment is measured as a share of the youth labor force (the unemployment rate) or total population. And the NEET rates also paint a worrisome picture.


TEMP• Flexible type of contracts that have mushroomed

during the recession: part-time and temporary jobs increased by 4 and 3 percentage points respectively, bringing the first to 46% and the second 59% between 2008 and 2012 on average for the EU. In 2012, the reports stresses, “over half of hirings across all occupational groups (except ‘legislators and managers’) were on temporary contracts and even over 70% in ‘elementary occupations’”.

(European Vacancy and Recruitment Report 2014, EU Commission)


NEET

• Although we understand the significant issues which confront many of the young people characterised as NEET, we find the term ambiguous and at times unhelpful, because of the broad scope of young people it encompasses

(UK Parliament, EU committee)


#ijf15

UNDEREMPLOYMENT• We note that highly skilled young people who are

‘underemployed’ can create a blockage to entry-level jobs for other young people.

• We recommend that the UK Government use some of the European Social Fund to introduce ways of assisting highly skilled young people to access the labour market, for example, through improved careers advice or support for entrepreneurship. This would complement their use of the majority of government and EU funding to target those disadvantaged young people who may be harder-to-reach.

(UK Parliament, EU committee)#ijf15 | @micheleazzu | @mapaone | @peggycorlin

Social consequences• migration of skilled labour • hysteria effects • social resistance to reforms • foster crime • erode social cohesion and institutions • lower job expectations and wages … All of this cause (even) less growth prospects. (IMF)


Social consequences

• Birth rate

• Marriages

• House

• Wages


Birth rate• Natalità in calo in Europa: Italia, Germania, Grecia e

Portogallo sono i paesi dove si fanno meno bambini (8.5 ogni 1.000 abitanti). Dal 2012 al 2013 l'UE è passata da una media di 10.4 neonati ogni mille abitanti a 10 ogni mille. I tassi più elevati in Francia, UK, Svezia, Lussemburgo (dove hanno leggi su paternità e maternità e forte welfare con asili, tate, e bonus).

• Ma INSEE (Istituto statistico francese) dice che per la prima volta dal 2000 il tasso di natalità in Francia è sceso sotto la soglia di 2 bambini per donna (1,99).

(Eurostat)


Italia

• Nel 2013 sono stati iscritti in anagrafe per nascita 509.000 bambini, quasi 25mila in meno rispetto al 2012 (nel 2013 erano 514.000). Dal 2008 ad oggi sono oltre 62mila le nascite in meno. È il dato più basso dall'unità d'Italia.

(Istat)


Telegraph

Best quote

• "This data makes my fertile friends look like the demographic equivalent of a two-headed unicorn"

Eleanor Robertson (Guardian AUS)


Lower wages

• Taking into account wages alone, 22-to-29-year-olds saw a 12.5% fall between 2009 – the year before the coalition took office – and 2014. There were declines for every age group over the five-year period, but the decline was most muted for the over-60s, who had a decline of 3.7% in wages according to the thinktank’s analysis.


Marriages• Marriage rates have fallen dramatically in

most major European countries over the past decade, as austerity, generational crisis and apathy towards the institution deter record numbers of young people from tying the knot. France, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Poland and Portugal - according to national and European data - Greece, Denmark, Hungary, the Netherlands and Britain. Marriages have halved since 1965.

(Guardian)#ijf15 | @micheleazzu | @mapaone | @peggycorlin

Italia• Nel 2013 sono stati celebrati 194.057 matrimoni -

13.081 in meno rispetto al 2012. Negli ultimi 5 anni la tendenza resta in calo, con circa 53mila nozze in meno

(Istat)

• Antonio Golini (Istat): “There are also economic causes because marriage means (…) big and costs a lot. So in a time of crisis people live together in an [unmarried] cohabitation."


• "The lack of stable jobs and absence of credit have become disincentives to forming a family," said Teresa Castro-Martin, professor of research in the department of population studies at the CSIC, a government research institute in Spain. The average age of newlyweds in Spain is now 37.2 years for men – almost 10 years higher than it was in the 1980s.


House• Almost half of Europe's young adults are living with their

parents. One of the most comprehensive social surveys of 28 European countries reveals that the percentage of people aged 18-30 who were still living with their parents had risen to 48%, or 36.7 million people, by 2011, in tandem with levels of deprivation and unemployment that surged during five years of economic crisis. The data from EU agency Eurofound (obtained by the Guardian) shows that few countries are immune and that the phenomenon is not exclusive to the debt-laden Mediterranean rim. Rises in the number of stay-at-home twentysomethings in Sweden, Denmark, France, Belgium and Austria. In Italy, nearly four-fifths (79%).

(Eurofound)


• Nove mesi e mezzo per vendere una casa, prezzi sostanzialmente fermi o leggermente in calo, così come stabili attorno al 16% si confermano gli 'sconti' che gli acquirenti riescono a spuntare sul prezzo iniziale di un'abitazione.

(Banca d’Italia).

• Home ownership rates for 25-year-olds have halved in two decades.

(UK insititute fiscal studies)#ijf15 | @micheleazzu | @mapaone | @peggycorlin

So what?

• One of the Eurofound report's authors, Anna Ludwinek, said: "The situation of youth has really fundamentally changed. And it looks different from the situation of their parents and grandparents".


Youth Guarantee• According to the International Labour

Organisation (ILO), an efficient Youth Guarantee at a European level would cost €21 billion. According to the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, the cost of supporting the 7.5 million young people aged 15-24 who are not employed, training or studying, and the loss of their productivity will cost the EU €150 billion per year.

• Economists have derided the scheme as a public relations exercise.


• The quality of employment available for young people has been largely overlooked. The 'any job is a good job' is turning into a new mantra. Speaking at the European Parliament on Monday (7 April 2014), the vice president of the European Youth Forum, Lloyd Russel-Moyle, said that the youth guaranteed is is open to abuse, because it doesn't exclude unpaid internships.

(European Youth Forum)#ijf15 | @micheleazzu | @mapaone | @peggycorlin

RESULTS

• Officials from the European Court of Auditors (ECA) responsible for screening the flagship Youth Guarantee initiative have admitted that they have yet to see a single young person who has found a job through it. On 24 Mar ECA published its 1st report. Iliana Ivanova, the ECA member responsible for the report said: “The court doesn’t know how much of the €12.7 billion has been used so far. 9 member states have not provided any information about their commitments, while the remaining countries have done so in varying degrees of detail”. The countries not reported Estonia, Spain, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Sweden and the UK.


MORE MONITORING• Claire Courteille, director of the International Labour

Organisation in Brussels: “YG needs more monitoring”.

• EU Youth Forum: “It is extremely difficult to follow the implementation process. Furthermore, it is very disappointing to see the lack of transparency in the Commission’s monitoring. It is very difficult to access Member States’ implementation plans. Up until now, we know from our member organisations across Europe, that engagement with young people has been haphazard, superficial and sometimes non-existent”.


Doubt 1

18-25 or 30 years old?

Laszlo Andor: “Spalmare le risorse rischierebbe di vanificare i risultati, applichiamo il programma alla fascia d’età al di sotto dei 25 anni e poi, se funziona, coinvolgiamo eventualmente anche i trentenni”.


Doubt 2Long or short term? • UK Parliament: “This is an important

consideration because it dictates the appropriate policy solutions. For a short-term problem, a large injection of funds may be enough to stimulate the youth labour market, whereas the resolution for a long-term problem may require a greater focus on structural change”.

• FMI: historically high, increasingly long term #ijf15 | @micheleazzu | @mapaone | @peggycorlin

Doubt 3Are internships and apprenticeships quality jobs? UK Parliament: “We are concerned about the proliferation of schemes being identified as apprenticeships but whose quality and applicability to the labour market is questionable. We believe that it is important to ensure that internships enable young people to access the labour market, and are not offered as a substitute for employment. We therefore endorse the European Commission’s attempts to create a common understanding of what constitutes EU”.


3 CONFLITTI

1. GENERAZIONALE

2. DI CLASSE (unpaid internships)

3. POLITICO


A political problem

• Mario Draghi (2012): “The European social model has already gone when we see the youth unemployment rates prevailing in some countries.”

• “The divide between the democratic institutions in Europe, representatives and political parties on the one hand, and Europe’s young citizens on the other hand is growing”


• “European elections [in 2014] have shown that there is still a high level of youth absenteeism, with only 28% of young people under 25 who actually voted,” Johanna Nyman, President of the European Youth Forum.


#ijf15

Erasmus needs


Grandi assenti

• Università

• Sindacati

DOMANDE

QUESTIONS#ijf15 | @micheleazzu | @mapaone | @peggycorlin

Young, qualified and jobless: how EU unemployment is defining the Millennial generation

Economy & Finance

Transcript of Young, qualified and jobless: how EU unemployment is defining the Millennial generation