[Read here]

The European Commission has announced that only nine of the twenty-eight European Union countries have submitted plans to tackle the bloc’s youth unemployment crisis. Under the so-called Youth Guarantee Scheme, all member states must submit plans to the European Commission before the end of this month. Watch here

•  In countries such as Germany and Austria with the lowest youth unemployment rates, temporary contracts are linked to education and training contracts (ie apprenticeships and traineeships)
• In countries such as Spain and Portugal, the high percentage of young people on temporary contracts (60% in Poland) is not linked to such training possibilities, but is instead due to the inability to find permanent work, reflecting problems of labour market segmentation

Read the article from the Nordic Labour Journal here

Bjarne Brøndbo, the employer who didn’t say no after the first attempt

He stood there with his cigaret behind his ear, asking: Bjarne, where can I smoke? “That was the first thing he said to me,” says employer Bjarne Brøndbo. After a few hours he was ready to give up on the school dropout. He called the Labour and Welfare Service (NAV) and said he didn’t think it would work. Give him one more chance, said Randi Nyheim Aglen from the youth team. That was the beginning of a good story. What happened?

The National Youth Council of Ireland and the European Youth Forum gave input to the Joint Committee on EU Affairs in the Irish Parliament last week on the youth guarantee.

If you’re not familiar with the Youth Guarantee, check out our publication about it. Here’s our Special Edition on Youth Guarantee.

Press Releases

 €3.16 bn – cost of doing nothing to combat youth unemployment

The NYCI has been a long time advocate of a youth guarantee – which would ensure young people on the live register for four months or more will automatically be directed into employment, education or training.

Following this latest round of meetings between NYCI, the European Youth Forum and both opposition and government during the EU Presidency, the Youth Council has warned that while a broad political consensus on the issue is to be welcomed, now is the time to get into the details and put ideas into action.

“The youth guarantee scheme is not a panacea, but it is an important first step – it could work in Ireland, if a number of conditions are satisfied,” said NYCI deputy director, James Doorley, speaking after the meeting.

“Firstly, it needs to be properly resourced to ensure we have sufficient high quality education, training and job experience places. Secondly, the Government will have to provide incentives to employers to take on young people who have participated in the scheme. Thirdly, we need additional measures to support young people who are long-term unemployed to avoid the weaknesses identified in the scheme in other countries where it already exists, including Finland and Sweden,” added Mr Doorley.

Scheme Cost effective

A factsheet on the youth guarantee released by the Youth Council today highlighted that the cost of doing nothing to combat youth unemployment in Ireland is €3.16 billion.[i]

“The cost per participant in the scheme in Sweden is €6,600.[ii] Recent figures show that there are 41,453 young people under 25 years of age on the Live Register for 6 months or more.[iii] Apply these to the Swedish per capita figure and you get a cost of just under €275 million to implement the scheme in Ireland,” stated Mr Doorley.

ENDS

Contact Daniel Meister, Communications Manager at NYCI on 087 781 4903 or 01 478 4122 communications@nyci.ie

Notes to Editors:

NYCI Infographic Factsheet : Youth Guarantee

http://www.youth.ie/sites/youth.ie/files/NYCI_051_A4_accessible.pdf

National Youth Council of Ireland

NYCI is a membership-led umbrella organisation that represents and supports the interests of voluntary youth organisations and uses its collective experience to act on issues that impact on young people.
www.youth.ie

Sources:

European employment & social policy Ministers to meet in Dublin tomorrow to focus on getting people into work

DUBLIN, 6 February – Employment and Social Policy Ministers are convening in Dublin tomorrow for a two day informal meeting focusing on one of the most difficult social problems facing Europe. The theme of the informal meeting is “getting people into work”. Ministers will share views and experiences on a number of policy areas, ranging from jobs and skills development in ICT, youth unemployment and activating jobless households that will feed into the process of developing services and supporting European people back into work.

The first plenary session will be co-chaired by Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton TD and Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD. The second plenary session on youth employment will be chaired by Minister Joan Burton.

Minister Joan Burton will also chair a workshop on active inclusion for jobless households, Minister Richard Bruton will chair a workshop on the employment and skills opportunities in the ICT area, and Minister for Disability, Equality, Mental Health and Older People, Kathleen Lynch TD will chair a workshop on  the labour market  engagement of older women.

Minister Joan Burton stated that, “with an unemployment rate of 11% across Europe Ireland’s Presidency comes at a pivotal time for Europe.  The three key elements for the Irish Presidency are stability, growth and jobs. This meeting, in an informal setting, is a good opportunity for Ministers for employment and social policy to have an open and honest debate on how we can focus our efforts in getting our European citizens into employment. I am particularly interested in developing strategies for tackling the problem of youth unemployment”.

Minister Richard Bruton said, “Reflecting our domestic priorities, the Irish Government has identified job-creation as a top priority during our Presidency of the Council of the EU. In recent years through the Action Plan for Jobs and Pathways to Work we have made significant changes to the Irish economy to support job-creation. Many of the challenges we have faced in Ireland are common across the EU, such as for example the ICT skills gap. Bringing together Europe’s Employment Ministers in Dublin to discuss and develop key supports for job-creation will be an important step in achieving our Presidency goals. I look forward to sharing lessons from Ireland and across Europe, making progress on measures to reduce the ICT skills gap and drive job-creation in Europe”.

The informal ministerial meeting will be preceded by meetings of the Presidency Trio of Employment Ministers (composed of the Presidency and the two succeeding Presidencies) with representatives of European social partners, conducted by Minister Richard Bruton, and with the Social Platform of European NGOs conducted by Minister Joan Burton. These discussions will focus on skills development and access to jobs for those furthest from the labour market.

ENDS

Notes for editors

For the agenda and media opportunities of this event, please see the Presidency website http://www.eu2013.ie/events/event-items/epscoinformal-20130207/

Contacts

Andrea Pappin, Presidency Spokesperson

+353 87 798 7769

andrea.pappin@taoiseach.gov.ie

Gerald Angley, Alternate Presidency Spokesperson

+353 86 414 1613

gerald.angley@taoiseach.gov.ie

Ireland’s welfare system should be a springboard as well as a safety net for our unemployed, writes Joan Burton

Let’s start with the figures, because they’re simply horrendous. Across Europe right now, 5.5 million young people – one in five of those aged between 15 and 24 who are on the labour market – are without a job. In some individual member states, the situation is even worse.

In Spain and Greece, it’s one in every two young people on the labour market, with youth unemployment rates above 50 per cent. In Ireland, the rate is 32 per cent, which corresponds to about 61,000 young people.

This is not just a problem. It’s an existential crisis for the European Union. The economic cost has been estimated at more than €150bn a year, or 1.2 per cent of EU GDP. But how do we measure the social cost, the terrible and potentially lasting effects of unemployment on the young people themselves?

The internationally respected economists David Bell and David Blanchflower found that even a short spell of unemployment when young can have devastating effects throughout a person’s life.

Youth unemployment increases the likelihood of being unemployed later in life. And there are a host of knock-on consequences on pay, health and status. In short, youth unemployment leaves permanent scars. That is why I say this is no mere problem for the EU; it’s a potential personal and societal tragedy. So what can be done about it?

This week in Dublin Castle, as part of Ireland’s presidency of the Council of the EU, social protection and employment ministers from the member states will gather to discuss this and other issues.

My colleague, Jobs Minister Richard Bruton, will chair discussions on skills development and training for growth sectors of the economy.

I will chair discussions on the youth unemployment crisis, and a key proposal to tackle it, namely the Youth Guarantee. Like all good ideas, it is a simple one – that member states would guarantee every young person under 25 a job, training or educational placement within a set number of months of becoming unemployed. But agreement will not be simple. During the negotiations so far, several member states have expressed understandable concerns, including how such a scheme would be funded.

But while I am cognisant of those concerns, we simply have to overcome them. Yes, the Youth Guarantee is ambitious. But we have to be ambitious – the sheer scale of the crisis demands it.

On the funding side, the European Commission envisages member states prioritising some of the money they receive from the European Social Fund to implement the guarantee. As part of our Presidency, Ireland is chairing separate negotiations on the wider EU budget for 2014 to 2020, including the ESF.

As chair, Ireland will act as honest broker in those negotiations, seeking to move them forward in a fair and impartial way. On the wider EU approach, I will say this, though: it is now clear that austerity policies cannot go on forever.

The IMF itself has acknowledged it underestimated the effects of austerity. Aside from the policy, the EU’s response to the economic crisis has been far too slow, even if the pieces are gradually coming together now, five years later.

We cannot wait five years to tackle the youth unemployment crisis. To do so would be to fail our young people, and stack up problems for the Union down the line. Here in Ireland, we are already dealing with the consequences of previous failures. This Government inherited a policy response to unemployment that was largely passive, allowing people to receive benefits indefinitely.

That is Ireland’s tragedy, which this Government is now doing its utmost to address.

While I firmly believe in the social welfare system as a safety net, it must also be a springboard, and that is why we are transforming the system and spending more than €1bn this year on activation schemes.

Europe has to respond in similar fashion, and the Youth Guarantee would be a major step. I am confident that during the Irish presidency, we can deliver a successful outcome to these negotiations and get agreement on a deal. It won’t mean that everybody will find employment overnight. But it will create opportunities and give hope to Europe’s youth, and lay a sustainable foundation for the EU’s future.

Joan Burton TD is Minister for Social Protection.