States of uncertainty: youth unemployment in Europe

This report is part of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) project, ‘Tackling youth unemployment: lessons from Europe’. This project is asking what lessons can be learned from the experiences of other countries about how best to tackle the short-term and underlying causes of rising youth unemployment. Using new statistical analysis of the youth unemployment picture across Europe, this report assesses the different roles played by education and training, business behaviour and labour market institutions in young people’s transitions from compulsory schooling to suitable employment. Among the issues it explores are: (1) how the size and nature of transition systems and vocational pathways affects employment outcomes, and how education systems and labour markets can do this more effectively; (2) the effects of different employment protection and out-of-work benefit regimes on youth unemployment levels; (3) the ways in which the changing structures of national economies have affected labour markets and the job opportunities available within them; and (4) the boost that working while studying gives to young people’s employability.

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