Transformations  in
Business & Economics

Generation of Young People in the EU Member States – the Generation of Unemployed?
Danuta Kopycinska

ABSTRACT. Global financial crisis, faced in 2007, has led both to slowdown (decline) of economic growth and thereby increase in unemployment in particular countries. This is also the case in the Member States, regardless of the fact if they joined EU-15 or EU-12, i.e. new countries undergoing transformation that joined the European Union in 2004. Increase in youth unemployment, i.e. among people who are just starting their career and facing barriers to utilizing human capital, is a particularly alarming phenomenon observed in the Member States.

In 2010, overall unemployment rate among people aged 15–64 amounted to 9.7%, whereas the rate among young people under 25 stood at 20.6% in the European Union. It was then that increase in unemployment (expressed in percentage points) in the first-mentioned age group was over 2.4 times higher compared to 2006, i.e. a year before the world crisis. This evidently proves the importance of problems to be faced both by countries undergoing transformation and EU-15 states.

Due to the significance of the issue, the present article is aimed at analyzing youth unemployment in comparison with overall unemployment in the Member States (EU-27). The analysis covered two age groups, i.e. people aged 20–24 and people aged 25–29. The year 2006, i.e. one year before the world crisis, was adopted as a base year. The year 2010 was the last year of the period under analysis.

KEYWORDS: human capital, labour market, unemployment, European Union.

JEL classification: E24.