Bill Mitchell-en Europe – the deliberate wastage of its youth continues1
(i) Sarrera2
(ii) Lehen ondorioa: gazteriarentzako beharrezko lan berme berri bat3
(iii) Falaziak osasungintzaz eta pentsioaz4
(iv) Gizaldi berria, produktibitatea eta austeritatea5
(v) Europako Youth Guarantee (2012)6
(vi) Eurostat-en datuak7
(vii) irudi batzuk
(The Eurostat presentation provides one view of the data. I [Mitchell] decided to explore the data more closely and the following graphs are relevant.)
(a) Lehen irudia: Education and Employment Status8
(b) Bigarren irudia9
(c) Hirugarren irudia10
Eurostat also provide data by Member States.
While at the EU28-level, the proportion of NEETs has risen in all youth cohorts bar the 15-19 group, the aggregate data hides marked regional disparities across the Union.
(viii) Mapa adierazgarria11
(ix) Irudi adierazgarria12
(x) NEET estatusaren aldaketa13
(xi) Europako Komisioa, moneta jaulkitzaileko gobernua14
Ondorioak
(1) There is no possible justification for this deliberate waste of labour resources.
(2) And as I have said in the past – these effects endure across the generations.
(3) Teenagers deprived of opportunities become young adults with inherited disadvantage. If that deprivation continues they enter the 25-29 years cohort – disadvantaged and starting to make families in poverty.
(4) Many will never enjoy any labour market continuity and their children then inherit that disadvantage and so the impacts widen and stretch out across time.
This latest data shows that is definitely happening.
(5) The principle policy response to the problem was the Youth Guarantee. Unfortunately, it was underfunded and poorly conceived – focusing on supply rather than job creation.
(6) What is needed is large-scale job creation schemes – actual jobs at fair pay – funded by the European Commission. That will not happen and so in a year’s time I expect to be reporting on similar data trends.
(7) Madness prevails in the European Union.
2 Jngelesez; “Earlier this month (August 11, 2017), Eurostat published the latest European Union data for – Young people in the EU: education and employment. This data now allows us to track the fortunes of three age cohorts – 15-19, 20-24 and 25-29 years since before the crisis to the end of 2016. So a teenager prior to the crisis (2007) would be transiting into the 25-29 years cohort in 2016. One of the disturbing trends shown in the data is the increasing number of young people in the older ‘youth’ categories that in 2016 we classified as being Neither in Employment, nor in Education or Training (NEET). Some will have been in that category for the entire duration of the crisis – that is, they dropped out of school early, are not receiving any skills development and are unemployed. Whereas in 2007, the proportion of NEETs in the 25-29 years cohort was 17.2 per cent, that figure has risen to 18.8 per cent by 2016 (although the peak of 20.7 per cent was reached in 2012).”
3 Ingelesez: “This suggests that the systems which provide transitions between education and employment are not working effectively because the demand-side of the labour market is deficient. That is, there is a lack of jobs available overall and the most disadvantaged youth workers are at the back of the queue along with the disabled and other stigmatised cohorts (for example, Roma people in the European context). There is an urgent need for a true Youth Job Guarantee, to replace the faux Youth Guarantee that was introduced in 2012. But then that would require abandoning the obsession with austerity and dysfunctional fiscal rules. The European Commission’s answer to the problem will be to have another ‘summit’ or two and issue plenty of statements replete with motherhood statements.”
4 Ingelesez: “A recurring theme among mainstream economic commentators is that the ageing societies that the Western nations are experiencing will eventually impose massive health and pension costs, which governments will be unable to afford. The claims of financial incapacity are, of course, fallacious.
As I noted in yesterday’s blog – When neo-liberal masquerades as anti-establishment – there are no financial constraints on governments being able to fund pensions, health care and other services that may arise as the population ages and the workforce shrinks.
The real challenges of a rising dependency ratio will be the real resources that the society can command in the future.”
5 Ingelesez: “Clearly, future generations will have to be more productive than past generations to support a broader group of citizens who are no longer working and require more intensive service support.
In that context, it is imperative that we improve our public education and health systems and ensure that all our young people are engaged in skill development to prepare them for the future productive challenge that we will place on them
In that context, fiscal austerity, which leaves a significant proportion of human resources idle, runs down public education capacity, delivers sub- standard health outcomes, is the opposite to what is required to prepare for the future.”
6 Ingelesez: ·The European Union introduced a Youth Guarantee in 2012 to target the NEET cohort. I have written about that in the following blogs (among others):
1. 4 years later – the European Youth Guarantee is an under-funded failure.
2. Latest news on European Youth Guarantee hardly inspiring.
3. European Youth Guarantee audit exposes its (austerity) flaws.
4. Youth Guarantee has to be a Youth Job Guarantee.
In general, I have not been impressed by the effectiveness of the under-funded Youth Guarantee, which was focused more on supply-side improvements (training, presentation etc) than it was on actually solving the problem of youth unemployment by creating jobs.
If the Youth Guarantee was [were] working we should have seen the NEET cohort largely eliminated by now – 4.5 years on.
The latest data from Eurostat certainly reinforces the point that the NEET problem has been moving through the age cohorts as the crisis has endured.”
7 Ingelesez: “Eurostat report that:
1. “Almost 90 million people aged 15-29 live in the European Union (EU). This represents 17% of its population.”
2. “the proportion of young people neither in employment nor in education or training (NEET) increases considerably with age. The NEET rate, which stood at 6.1% for the age group 15-19 in 2016, tripled to 18.8% for those aged 25-29.”
3. “In 2016, almost 1 in 3 young people aged 20-24 was neither in employment nor in education or training in Italy (29.1%) … Greece (23.0%) … and about 1 in 5 in Spain (21.2%)”
4. “At EU level, the equivalent of the total population of Ireland – almost 5 million young persons aged 20-24 (16.7%) – were in 2016 neither in employment nor in education or training.”
5. There are massive regional disparities.”
8 Ingelesez: “The first series show the Education and Employment Status for the three age cohorts (15-19, 20-24, and 25-29) for the EU28 as a whole for 2016 (blue bars) and 2007 (red triangles).
The message is that the situation for 15-19 year olds hasn’t changed much, which is unsurprising, given that participation in formal education dominates that age bracket.
What is apparent is that their employment rate has dropped from 6.1 per cent in 2007 to just 3.8 per cent in 2016. A higher proportion are exclusively in education, which might mean that the lack of employment opportunities has forced teenagers to remain at school.
There is evidence that this is not necessarily a good thing because some students are better off leaving school and developing job-specific skills and work experience.”
9 Ingelesez: “A similar trend exists for the 20-24 years bracket. A higher proportion have remained exclusively in education and there has been a dramatic drop off in the proportion employed (from 38.4 per cent in 2007 to 33.4 per cent in 2016).
But the NEET proportion has risen substantially between 2007 and 2016 for this group – from 15.2 per cent to 16.7 per cent, which reflects, in part, the time-flows of teenagers who were dislocated by the recession and subsequent austerity.”
10 Ingelesez: “These time-flow effects are very noticeable in the next cohort – 25-29 year olds. Their participation exclusively in education has been nearly constant (slightly rising) but their NEET rat has risen from 17.2 per cent in 2007 to 18.8 per cent in 2016, as their employment rates have fallen from 62.9 per cent to 59.5 per cent.
The scarring from these flow effects through time will be massive. This is a group that should normally be almost totally in employment developing career profiles.
But 18.8 per cent are doing nothing to advance their skills or work experience or earning income.”
11 Ingelesez: “The following map is taken from the Eurostat release and shows this geographic disparity at at 2016 for the 20-24 years cohort.
There is a strong correspondence between the harshness of the austerity imposed and the proportion of NEETs across the European Union.”
12 Ingelesez: “The next graph is also taken from the Eurostat release and shows the change in NEET rate for the 20-24 years cohort between 2006 and 2016.
The disparity is significant.”
13 Ingelesez: “To show how these disparities have flown through to the next age cohort as the recession endured and the austerity deepened, I graphed the change in NEET status for the 25-29 year old cohort between 2007 and 2016.
The patterns are predictable – Greece, Spain and Italy have seen the largest change in NEET status for this early Prime-Age worker cohort.
The 25-29 age period is a time when a worker should be in the early stages of career building and accumulating essential on-the-job skills and experience.
However as a result of the poor policy framework in the European Union and the excessive austerity, many EU28 Member States have seen huge shifts in NEET status for this cohort.”
14 Ingelesez “It is almost unbelievable that the European Commission would deliberately run a policy regime that would generate this outcome.
Remember that the currency-issuing government always chooses the unemployment rate. In the European context, that is blurred by the creation of the common currency and the lack of fiscal capacity at the federal level.
It is clear that the ECB issues the currency and has been funding governments since the crisis (as I will write in a blog to come).
It is also clear that the European Commission has been imposing vicious austerity on to Member States – almost in direct proportion with the severity of the recession encountered in each State – which is madness in itself.
Taken together, the policy arms at the European Union level have created a situation where 33.5 per cent of Greeks of the age 25-29 years are in the NEET category – going nowhere, doing nothing, wasting away.
The proportion for Italy is 32.3 per cent, Spain 24.2, Ireland 19.4 per cent, Portugal 17.2 per cent.”
