Summary 27.06.2003

Interpretations of youth unemployment

In the early 1990s, when the economic depression set in, it took four years for Finland to get from full employment to mass unemployment. At the same time, the face of unemployment changed in the country: while being earlier a problem in, above all, remote areas and the countryside, it now touched Helsinki, too, and in a drastic manner. This also implied a test for the personnel resources of the social services and for the employment services.

During the depression (then usually referred to as "the Recession"), unemployment among young people increased strongly. Those who lack either work experience or professional education are typically young, and when labour supply is greater than labour demand, the inexperienced and unskilled become the losers. In Helsinki and its surroundings, the situation of young unemployed people was also aggravated by the fact that this part of the country did not have the routine for employment-supporting measures that many other parts of Finland had. Therefore, youth unemployment was tough particularly in the first stages of the depression.

In the late 1990s, when youth unemployment started decreasing clearly, the debate that had been on during the depression ebbed out. Since then, the situation has mostly remained unchanged, although certain signs of an increase in youth unemployment have been visible ever since late 2002.

Although the number of unemployed young people has remained small, the phenomenon of youth unemployment relates to a number of interesting issues. The three articles of the present publication analyse youth unemployment at a conceptual and experienced level. They concentrate particularly on the times during and after the economic depression, but at the same time, they raise a few issues at a principle level that should be discussed regardless of what the employment situation among young people happens to be. In view of planning employment-political measures and finding good solutions we need, for example, comprehensive information on how young people themselves have felt about the measures taken to date.

In the first article, Lasse Siurala views youth unemployment as a concept and discusses the problems of how to define "youth" and "unemployed", and uses various practices in various countries as references. At European level, there is no uniform practice for what age groups should be regarded as "youth". Moreover, it happens that within one and the same country, various authorities have different definitions, a fact which complicates the matter even further. Since practice and definitions vary considerably, there is no point in making quantitative comparisons of youth unemployment in Europe unless we specify clearly which people are regarded as "youth" or "young people".

Siurala's article also deals with the links between unemployment, education and social exclusion. We may assume that these factors are related to each other, but at the same time we should be careful not to jump to conclusions. As an example, fore some young jobless the family may function as a "bumper" against the evils of unemployment, whereas to others it may "bequeath" a certain attitude towards working life. To some young people, unemployment may be a normal part of their planning for life, while to others it may be a gateway to social exclusion. At the end of his article Siurala notes that youth unemployment should be viewed as a social phenomenon with many faces.

In the second article of the publication, Ira Malmberg-Heimonen compares how young people in Helsinki and other parts of Finland have experienced their unemployment. She discusses how life styles and opportunities in big cities partly makes life easier, partly more difficult for the unemployed. Using a statistical analysis she studies the mental well-being of young jobless people. It proved that they had clearly more mental problems in Helsinki than elsewhere in Finland. Life styles in big cities combined with unemployment may also imply a greater likelihood of feeling lonely and isolated, which can make it even more difficult to cope. Malmberg-Heimonen concludes her article by noting that it would be urgent to find out what kind of survival strategies young people in various housing milieus have.

In the last article, Matilda Wrede-Jäntti reports on two rounds of personal interviews with unemployed youths living in Helsinki. The purpose of the research was to find out what unemployed young people in Helsinki think about their situation and what, if any, plans they have regarding work. Wrede-Jäntti also relates her findings to policy measures directed at unemployed youths. The study describes in detail the choices made and solutions chosen by a few selected interviewees. The findings suggest that the category "unemployed young people" includes a variety of different kinds of people, with varying needs, values and interests. Existing policy measures to deal with unemployment among youths affect the young jobless very differently. Wrede-Jäntti emphasises that this heterogeneity ought to be kept in mind in designing policy interventions directed at unemployed youths.