The project's Final Report has been published on September 8, 2015.
Direct link to the pdf
The Nordic countries share two distinct features with the rest of Europe. First, youth face a clearly higher risk of unemployment than adults also in the Nordic countries. Second, the Nordic countries have also experienced a marked increase in youth unemployment since the onset of the global financial and economic crisis.
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The relatively higher
vulnerability of youth to unemployment and
inactivity was a widely recognized problem in many European countries
already before the onset of the global financial and economic crisis.
Particular attention was thereby paid to the multiple barriers in
finding work faced by low-skilled youth, that is, early school-leavers.
Many European economies were tackling a number of labour market
problems - judged to affect adversely the transition from school to
work of youth as well as their initial labour market experiences - in
order to cope with unacceptably high youth unemployment and inactivity
rates.
The global financial and economic crisis is commonly seen to have aggravated many of these structural problems and, consequently, the situation of especially those youth whose labour market prospects were weak already prior to the crisis. There are several obvious reasons why young people have been hit so hard. School-leavers are often the first to encounter difficulties: when the labour market deteriorates, employers shed workers and also become much more selective in their hiring of new staff. As those making the transition from school to work compete with more experienced workers for (fewer) jobs, they often face virtually impossible barriers when trying to get a foothold in the labour market. However, the crisis has posed daunting challenges also to those youth who were already in the labour market but holding temporary jobs and/or working in business-cycle sensitive industries; they have often been among the first to lose their jobs. And with the labour market having become more selective, the risk of unemployment for recent entrants is notably higher among those lacking relevant skills or experience and, conversely, they also face particular difficulties in finding a new job.
Increasing youth unemployment rates in combination with discouraging estimates of the likely short-term evolution of youth unemployment soon triggered, in individual countries, a multitude of actions aimed at cushioning the effects of the crisis on youth while, simultaneously, pushing forward the long-term agenda of necessary structural reforms for tackling pre-crisis youth unemployment problems. A major challenge has thereby been to devise short-term measures which do not conflict with but, preferably, complement and support the long-term reform agenda of promoting more and better jobs for youth in response to projected demographic changes.
The short- and long-term measures planned and realized in individual countries have been surrounded by a myriad of activities initiated, not least, by the European Commission (1) and the OECD (2), but also by, for instance, Eurofound and the Nordic Council of Ministers (3).
The global financial and economic crisis is commonly seen to have aggravated many of these structural problems and, consequently, the situation of especially those youth whose labour market prospects were weak already prior to the crisis. There are several obvious reasons why young people have been hit so hard. School-leavers are often the first to encounter difficulties: when the labour market deteriorates, employers shed workers and also become much more selective in their hiring of new staff. As those making the transition from school to work compete with more experienced workers for (fewer) jobs, they often face virtually impossible barriers when trying to get a foothold in the labour market. However, the crisis has posed daunting challenges also to those youth who were already in the labour market but holding temporary jobs and/or working in business-cycle sensitive industries; they have often been among the first to lose their jobs. And with the labour market having become more selective, the risk of unemployment for recent entrants is notably higher among those lacking relevant skills or experience and, conversely, they also face particular difficulties in finding a new job.
Increasing youth unemployment rates in combination with discouraging estimates of the likely short-term evolution of youth unemployment soon triggered, in individual countries, a multitude of actions aimed at cushioning the effects of the crisis on youth while, simultaneously, pushing forward the long-term agenda of necessary structural reforms for tackling pre-crisis youth unemployment problems. A major challenge has thereby been to devise short-term measures which do not conflict with but, preferably, complement and support the long-term reform agenda of promoting more and better jobs for youth in response to projected demographic changes.
The short- and long-term measures planned and realized in individual countries have been surrounded by a myriad of activities initiated, not least, by the European Commission (1) and the OECD (2), but also by, for instance, Eurofound and the Nordic Council of Ministers (3).
(1)
Among the many
recent initiatives of the European Commission are Renewed social agenda
and An EU Strategy for Youth -
Investing and
Empowering. All these initiatives have been
brought to a head in the Europe 2020 framework
launched in March 2010 as a continuation of the Lisbon process. One of
the
seven flagships initiated in support of the 2020 agenda is targeted at
youth, viz. the Youth
on the move flagship launched in
September, 2010. Recently, these activities have been supplemented with
an action plan to reduce early
school-leaving in the EU.
(2) Among the many recent initiatives of the OECD, especially one deserves to be mentioned, viz. the High-Level Policy Forum on Jobs for Youth: Addressing Policy Challenges in OECD Countries organized jointly with the Norwegian Ministry of Labour in late September, 2010. The main issues and policy recommendations on how to tackle youth unemployment problems presented at this Forum, and later published in a comprehensive report, synthesized the findings of thematic reviews of Jobs for Youth undertaken over the years 2006-09 in 16 member countries. While the review for Norway took place against the background of a buoyant economy, the corresponding review for Denmark was more concerned with youth unemployment in the context of the ongoing economic crisis. These thematic reviews did not cover Finland, Iceland or Sweden.
(3) The Nordic Council of Ministers has, in recent years, initiated several reports on how the youth unemployment problems are addressed in the Nordic countries. Among these are a report by Markussen (2010) on drop-out in upper secondary education in the Nordic countries, and a report by Ramböll Management Consulting AB (2010) on existing and planned measures in the Nordic countries, as initiated by relevant government departments, to prevent youth unemployment.
(2) Among the many recent initiatives of the OECD, especially one deserves to be mentioned, viz. the High-Level Policy Forum on Jobs for Youth: Addressing Policy Challenges in OECD Countries organized jointly with the Norwegian Ministry of Labour in late September, 2010. The main issues and policy recommendations on how to tackle youth unemployment problems presented at this Forum, and later published in a comprehensive report, synthesized the findings of thematic reviews of Jobs for Youth undertaken over the years 2006-09 in 16 member countries. While the review for Norway took place against the background of a buoyant economy, the corresponding review for Denmark was more concerned with youth unemployment in the context of the ongoing economic crisis. These thematic reviews did not cover Finland, Iceland or Sweden.
(3) The Nordic Council of Ministers has, in recent years, initiated several reports on how the youth unemployment problems are addressed in the Nordic countries. Among these are a report by Markussen (2010) on drop-out in upper secondary education in the Nordic countries, and a report by Ramböll Management Consulting AB (2010) on existing and planned measures in the Nordic countries, as initiated by relevant government departments, to prevent youth unemployment.
There is an obvious need to produce extensive cross-country comparative evidence on the dynamic nature of the labour market situation of youth in the Nordic countries and identify key pathways of youth leaving school with different levels of education. It is also of considerable importance to try to identify the timing not only of possible reconnections of young people to education (e.g. to complete a diploma) but also of other measures, notably active labour policy measures (ALPMs), directed towards unemployed or inactive youth. Of particular interest in this context is apprenticeship training in general and apprenticeship contracts for low-skilled youth in particular, both of which have been assessed as promising avenues. The project sets out to fill in these knowledge gaps and, in so doing, to provide comprehensive new research-based evidence on the youth unemployment problems in the Nordic countries in support of policy-making within the fields of both education and labour markets.
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A key challenge when
addressing youth unemployment problems is that the youth population is
far from homogenous. School-leavers are equipped with different
quantities and qualities of formal education. They also differ in a
multitude of other dimensions, including school experiences and early
lifetime experiences (notably social background). Their transition from
school to work and initial labour market experiences also reveal
considerable variation both in length and quality. This variation has
been shown to partly originate in differences in the school-leavers'
educational and social background. However, it has also been maintained
to largely reflect the functioning of the labour market, that is, the
labour market institutions in force and the labour market policies
pursued in a rapidly changing economic and social environment. While
early unemployment is known to affect the youth to a substantial
degree, it is also recognized that the short- and long-term
consequences of early unemployment differ markedly across young
individuals. In particular, spells of unemployment entail the risk of
creating permanent scars especially for disadvantaged youth who are
particularly ill-prepared for today's labour market. In view of these
challenges, the project will address the following issues, organized
into a set of specific tasks:
- Define major groups of youth in relation to school-to-work transitions and initial labour market experiences, with due allowance made for differences in levels of formal education; and create reasonable proxies for the quantification of these major groups through careful inspection of the country-specific datasets to be used in combination with an in-depth review of the international literature having developed and implemented similar indicators.
- Describe, using the available country-specific datasets, the evolution of the relative importance of these major groups of school-leavers, and compare levels and trends across countries.
- Explore key labour market related factors behind identified cross-country similarities and differences.
- Examine in more depth the role of apprenticeship training and contracts for tackling the youth unemployment problems.
Expected impact
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The output of the project will:
- Complement in an important way the major initiatives taken so far by the Nordic Council of Ministers within the field of youth unemployment.
- Produce high-quality indicators providing a comprehensive picture of the youth unemployment problems and their evolution in the Nordic countries. Indeed, most of these indicators should be easy to update later on by, for instance, the national statistics office in respective country. This, in turn, can be expected to contribute to improving the coverage of the Nordic countries in statistics on youth produced by Eurostat and the OECD.
- Provide policy-makers and other stakeholders with detailed information on the relationship between various aspects of the youth unemployment problems and the functioning of the labour market in particular.
- Undertake research (for Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) that should be easily repeatable for Iceland once suitable data for the country is readily available
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