There has been a substantial debate of youth issues on SEJ [Youth Unemployment Debate]. This is a further contribution seen from the perspective of a so-called ‘success’ country.
In principle, there are two ways to answer the question raised in the title:
I. To be frank: nobody really knows!
Whenever you take a closer look at any argument put forward to answer this question, you will soon realize its limitations and drawbacks, whether the argument refers to the famous dual system, to the social partnership, or to active labour market programmes, etc.
II. Measurement issues
Youth unemployment rates are NOT an accurate measure to grasp the situation of young people in the labour market because these data basically are blurred by decisions to further attend schools or universities and by allocation issues such as counting apprentices as being full-time employed . This is valid for more or less every country. Taking a broader picture into account, i.e. NEET rates, employment rates, unemployment ratios and unemployment rates, it would be fair to say: the labour market situation for young people is particularly favourable in the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark and Germany, according to an unweighted average of these indicators.
But if labour market conditions for young people are defined relative to the overall labour market situation in a country to highlight the situation of 15-24 years old persons – as is done by the green line in the figure above – Austria moves somewhat closer to the EU27 average. Seen from this perspective, the situation for young people is particularly bad in Sweden, Luxemburg, and Italy; this comes somewhat as a surprise.
