Youth unemployment

A review of facts and institutions

Abstract

Youth have been more and more at the centre of the public debate of the recent years, complicit the fact that, starting from 2009, the economic crisis hit younger generations disproportionally and almost six years later still exhibit its persistent effects on their labour market prospects. Different data manifestly show the increasingly difficult conditions of young people. From the widespread high youth unemployment showing no sign of decreasing, to the discouraged youth seeing no prospects and postponing their entrance either in the active society or in school and university, to the demographic pyramid showing youth shares wearing thinner and thinner, the balance is rather grim for youth. If the crisis has exacerbated young difficulties in the labour market and, more in general, in the society, the roots of this phenomenon go back far beyond the crisis, being structurally embedded in the cultural, economic and institutional characteristics of the countries.