Wasted youth

DAVOS — Youth unemployment is at staggering levels in the European Union. Every fourth young person between the ages of 15 and 24 is unemployed, amounting to around 5.5 million young adults without a job. In Spain, recent employment data indicate that the number has risen to 60 percent, a new record.   The figures serve as a stark reminder of the fundamental problems within some of Europe’s southern economies.  

The euro-area jobless rate rose to a record in November as the fiscal crisis and tougher austerity measures deepened Europe’s economic troubles. Unemployment in the 17-nation region rose to 11.8% from 11.7% in October, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said Tuesday. That’s the highest since the data series started in 1995 and in line with the median estimate of 27 economists in a Bloomberg News survey.

Goldman Sachs Chief European Economist Huw Pill and his team are out with a new report on the fiscal situation in the euro zone, and they are very much focused on debt.

Euro area unemployment figures for November are out and the ugly, truly abysmally ugly reality of the EA17 economic conditions can no longer be hidden from view:

Amazing discrepancies in small business employment in Italy vs. the rest of the EU will go a long ways towards explaining why Mario Draghi's OMT plan to "save the euro" cannot possibly work. I pieced the following analysis together after reading some interesting comments on Eurointelligence in today's Daily Morning Briefing.

Inquiring minds are investigating miserable unemployment stats in Euroope as reported this morning by Eurostast. The euro area (EA17) seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 11.8% in November 2012, up from 11.7% in October. The EU27 unemployment rate was 10.7% in November 2012, stable compared with October. In both zones, rates have risen markedly compared with November 2011, when they were 10.6% and 10.0% respectively.

Youth unemployment is shockingly high in Greece, Spain, and Italy as shown by Europe's Most Tragic Graph by The Atlantic.

By Katchum:Since the crisis of 2008, the unemployment rate for the PIIGS has been increasing rapidly. For the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain), the unemployment rate more than doubled from 2008 up till now (Chart 1). (Click to enlarge)