Youth unemployment in Mediterranean Europe It’s grim down south

Young Greeks, Italians and Spaniards respond in different ways to their plight

The Economist, Sep 10th 2011 | ATHENS, MADRID AND ROME | from the print edition

 

The Athenian approach

 

ALTHOUGH Spain’s youth-unemployment figures are the European Union’s worst, those of Greece are not much better. Along with Italy (which fares a little better on this particular measure) these Mediterranean economies share a savage distinction between older “insiders” with permanent employment and generous benefits—a class which very definitely includes the countries’ politicians—and younger “outsiders” on short-term contracts with minimal entitlements.
In Italy, where the government has floated the idea of making it easier for firms to hire younger workers by easing some labour rules, the country’s largest trade-union federation shows what Italian youngsters are up against: “This would damage the rights of all workers in order to help the young,” Vincenzo Scudiere of the CGIL told the Wall Street Journal. A notorious Greek law passed in 1992 forced new entrants to the workforce (and their employers) to pay higher payroll taxes than those already employed. Savas Robolis, head of research at INE-GSEE, a union-backed think-tank, says that over two-thirds of Greek employees are 43 or older.
Yet despite their similar predicaments, the youth of southern Europe has responded to the crisis in very different ways. When tens of thousands of young Spaniards emerged in May, apparently out of nowhere, to turn Puerta del Sol, a square in central Madrid, into a tent city, the tenor of their complaint was far from revolutionary. The earnest young protesters, dubbed indignados, devoted themselves to talking through and voting on every issue that occurred to them; alcohol was frowned upon.
Polls found that up to 80% of Spaniards had some sympathy with the peaceable young protesters, who have called without much controversy for a reform to Spain’s voting system to allow smaller parties to break the current duopoly, an end to political corruption, mercy for mortgage-defaulters and a bit of a biffing for bankers. Had their demands been more focused on the structures that keep them unemployed, enthusiasm might not have been as universal.
While young Spaniards have been demonstrating, young Italians have been emigrating. For some time Italy has been exporting more graduates than it imports. Italians of all ages feel a weary fatalism after a decade of almost no economic growth. Spaniards and Greeks, by contrast, have been whisked abruptly, and painfully, from boom to bust.
Indeed, the Greek journey has been the most dramatic of all, and a tradition of sometimes violent protest found ample opportunity for expression after May 2010, when the country accepted its first international bail-out. Since then the youth-unemployment rate has risen by over a third. Barely a week goes by without some form of industrial action. In June, young protesters declared themselves aganaktismenoi (indignants) in solidarity with their Spanish counterparts. But Greece’s scenes of violence are a world away from peaceful Madrid.
And behind the sound and fury of Greece’s protests there is a growing sense among young people that they can do little to improve their prospects. Rather than ape the idealism of their Spanish brethren, many are following the Italian example and seeking opportunities elsewhere. It won’t be low-skilled workers leaving, as in the 1960s, says Mr Robolis: it will be an educated elite.
“[The protesters] accomplished nothing; they were just sent away,” says a young woman standing in front of Greece’s parliament handing out flyers advertising “cash for gold”. Her job pays €4 an hour, she says; she was lucky to get it through a friend.