Youth Unemployment in Greece

Download or read book Youth Unemployment in Greece written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Young people in Greece have been more adversely affected by the crisis than in the other countries analysed (Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus). This holds true for all parameters considered - employment, unemployment, long-term unemployment, NEET youth (Neither in Employment, Education or Training). Youth unemployment has been declining in all these countries since 2013 (Cyprus: 2014) while economic adjustment was ongoing, but remained at a high level of 50.1 % in January 2015 in Greece. - Greece shows a number of specific structural features having caused a comparatively weak performance before the crisis started: a prolonged and incomplete transition from education to work, a high share of highly educated unemployed aged 25-29, strong gender differentials, (flattening) regional disparities, sectoral labour market segregation and a high share of informal employment. - As a reaction to soaring youth unemployment, European and national initiatives have been intensified to cope with structural weaknesses and to improve short-term job perspectives. These include, for example, a national Youth Action Plan (December 2012), funding from the Youth Employment Initiative and support from a Commission Task Force Greece. - Given a persisting lack of labour demand and budget constraints, recommendations from recent analyses include the expansion of temporary, subsidised public work programmes, further increasing the effective use of EU funding, efficiency gains in shaping ALMPs and expanding the age limits of the Youth Guarantee. They also point to a dilemma: a further increase in resource allocation for programmes targeted at young people could come at the expense of other numerically larger groups of recipients.