Davos - Youth Unemployment at 51.4% in Spain

Just read that in the Guardian and am flabbergasted.  How did the world come to this? It's not young peoples fault that European economies are in freefall but they are certainly one of the main groups getting the worst of things.

In the UK youth unemployment is at 22% so we still have a way to go to be in the car crash state that is Spain but we all have a duty to act now or we will face so much turmoil and unrest later on that taking no action is not an option.

The World Economic Forum, Davos

The summit of EU leaders took place last week and youth unemployment and how to address it was a hot topic.  On the one hand they are calling for restraint and austerity measures to curb the excessive spending of yesterday and on the other they want to pump money into schemes to rescue our lost generation of youth.  Both these measures are at odds with each other.  Austerity cuts ultimately lead to less jobs and  the private sector is so jittery across Europe that no one will be filling the void where public sector jobs had once existed. We are stuck in a viscous downward spiral - new thinking will be required to stop the young losing faith in life and humanity. 

What Would I Do? 

I'd stop the rot and get proper schemes in place to arm young people with the right skills:

• Work with them to get proper communication skills
• Work with them to learn how to find jobs - they are there but you must search hard
• Work with to understand how to write a captivating CV
• Work with them so that they are kept busy and maintain their spirits and motivation.  It's all too easy to get despondent and depressed when you have nothing to do most days.
• Work with them if the above isn't working to come up with ideas and set up their own businesses.