As societies become more technically advanced and jobs require more expertise, young people are forced into a prolonged state of social marginality. Employment during adolescence could provide significant experiences for growth into later work roles, but most societies are not equipped to provide adolescents with meaningful work experience. In Youth Unemployment and Society, a group of historians, psychologists, economists and sociologists provide a cross-national examination of trends in youth unemployment and intervention strategies in the United States and Europe. Assessing the causes of aggregate societal unemployment rates, the authors address factors that make individuals more vulnerable to unemployment and consider the developmental consequences of this experience. The volume also examines how persistently high rates of youth unemployment affect society's values, beliefs, and institutions.

This timely book introduces a fresh perspective on youth unemployment by analysing it as a global phenomenon. Ross Fergusson and Nicola Yeates argue that only by incorporating analysis of the dynamics of the global economy and global governance can we make convincing, comprehensive sense of these developments. The authors present substantial new evidence spanning a century pointing to the strong relationships between youth unemployment, globalisation, economic crises and consequent harms to young people’s social and economic welfare worldwide. The book notably encompasses data and analysis spanning the Global South as well as the Global North.

Young People and Long-Term Unemployment examines the consequences of long-term unemployment for the personal, social, and political lives of young adults aged 18–34 across four European cities: Cologne (Germany), Geneva (Switzerland), Lyon (France), and Turin (Italy). Adopting a multidimensional theoretical framework aiming to bring together insights based on the contextual (macro), organizational (meso), and individual (micro) levels, and combining quantitative and qualitative data and analyses, it reaches a number of important conclusions. First, our study shows that the experience of long-term unemployment has a negative impact on different dimensions of young people’s lives. When compared to employed youth, unemployed youth are less satisfied with their lives, more isolated, and less independent financially. Second, however, there are important variations across the four cities. This means that, in spite of widespread retrenchments, in some places the welfare state still acts as a buffer against unemployment. Third, although young unemployed people participate in politics equally if not slightly more than employed youth, the young unemployed are often disconnected from politics. This is so even when they have important grievances to express in the face of high youth unemployment, precarious working conditions, and grim future perspectives on the labor market. This book will be useful for scholars interested in unemployment politics and youth politics, researchers and teachers in political science, sociology, and social psychology.

This book examines youth unemployment and intervention strategies in the United States and Europe.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.Policymakers throughout Europe are enacting policies to support youth labour market integration. However, many young people continue to face unemployment, job insecurity, and the subsequent consequences.Adopting a mixed-method and multilevel perspective, this book provides a comprehensive investigation into the multifaceted consequences of social exclusion. Drawing on rich pan-European comparative and quantitative data, and interviews with young people from across Europe, this text gives a platform to the unheard voices of young people.Contributors derive crucial new policy recommendations and offer fresh insights into areas including youth well-being, health, poverty, leaving the parental home, and qualifying for social security.

This important new book presents the findings of the first comparative study of unemployed youth in Europe using a large and original data set. It addresses some of the key questions around the issue including: How do young people cope with unemployment? Does unemployment lead to social exclusion of young people, implying a withdrawal from society, financial deprivation and social isolation? Drawing on a research sample of over 17000 young unemployed people in ten European countries, the book examines how different welfare strategies and labour market policies in different countries influence the risk of social exclusion among unemployed youth.

This volume brings together a massive body of much-needed research information on a problem of crucial importance to labor economists, policy makers, and society in general: unemployment among the young. The thirteen studies detail the ambiguity and inadequacy of our present standard statistics as applied to youth employment, point out the error in many commonly accepted views, and show that many critically important aspects of this problem are not adequately understood. These studies also supply a significant amount of raw data, furnish a platform for further research and theoretical work in labor economics, and direct attention to promising avenues for future programs.