The labour market situation of young people has deteriorated throughout recent decades in modern societies. Already before the recent economic crisis, youth unemployment had become widespread. At the same time, even young people that entered the labour market often had difficulties in finding a safe, permanent, continuous job; instead they were often disproportionately represented in atypical work forms such as fixed-term employment, (involuntary) part-time work or low-paid jobs. It was these developments that have led scholars to portray youth as the ‘losers of globalisation’ around the millennium change.
This problematic labour market situation of youth, that in a number of countries was further exacerbated throughout the recent economic crisis, has sparked both political as well as scientific attention, particularly in Europe, reflected in the recent EU research framework programmes from which this project and volume originated. The aim of this project, running from 2015 to 2018, was to investigate the causes and consequences of early job insecurity among youth and to evaluate the policy responses, both at the national as well as the supranational level. This volume is the first of two publications from this project, focussing primarily on a detailed reconstruction of young people’s early job insecurity, its development throughout the economic crisis and the policy responses to it. The second takes a complementary view when looking at the ways in which young adults have coped with this situation, based on a large number of qualitative interviews with them.
The volume is organised in two sections, one focussing on recent developments in youth unemployment and job insecurity itself, mostly based on survey data. In the second, policy approaches to tackle these phenomena are being analysed. Both parts are preceded by a general introduction by the editors in which they highlight their approach, which is closely linked to Amartya Sen’s (Reference Sen, Nussbaum and Sen1993) capability concept putting high emphasis on an individual’s active agency. One key strength of the book is that it treats this individual agency as being embedded in number of “initial conditions” and “conversion factors” at three different levels: the individual “micro-level” level, the “meso-level” of institutional arrangements, firms and networks and the “macro-level” of national and supranational policy arrangements (p. 11). This distinction not only is a useful tool for analytical distinction but also allows the authors deriving systematic and differentiated policy conclusions later in their book.
The first part of the book on patterns of young people’s job insecurity and its development throughout the crisis starts with a chapter by Maria Karamessini et al. in which the authors develop a composite index of “Early Job Insecurity” (EJI), bringing together various indicators describing employment outcomes, smoothness of education-to-work transitions, quality of jobs and degree of employment security. Values for the single sub-dimensions mostly originate from the European Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS), whereby figures from the onset of the crisis (2008) to more recent days (2015) are being compared. Descriptive evidence already highlights that there is a great variety in EJI across European countries, not only with regards to the overall level, but also the development throughout the crisis.
The same team of authors (Maria Karamessini et al.) then sets out to use the just developed index to investigate what are the individual and country level factors that may explain variations in EJI and unemployment between the nine project countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and the UK) using multinomial logistic regression. Results demonstrate that it has been particularly younger cohorts, young people with lower education and women that have been most seriously affected by early career insecurity.
Piotr Michón shifts the attention from the micro to the macro-level when investigating how far demographic developments in the EU can be held responsible for the labour market situation of youth in EU-28 countries. His analyses based on EU-LFS data for 2007 and 2017 indicate that both the relative share of youth (as compared to the overall working age population) as well as the development in the absolute number of youth affect youth employment outcomes. This chapter is particularly instructive as it informs the reader not only to look at within-country developments in the employment sphere. As Michón highlights, the improvement in youth unemployment rates in a number of Eastern European countries needs to be interpreted carefully, given that it may not primarily reflect generic labour market improvements, but is rather due to low fertility and migration to other countries. Particularly the latter may be detrimental as it endangers, amongst others, the long-term fiscal sustainability of these states and its public welfare systems.
Christian Imdorf et al. take another interesting and innovative perspective on EJI by using a self-designed factorial web survey with recruiters in Bulgaria, Greece, Norway and Switzerland. Applying vignette techniques, they investigate how far the previous employment history of young people “scars” them in their previous job search. Their results highlight that such scarring, particularly that of earlier unemployment spells, is evident but differs between countries and educational levels. Notably, it is not only unemployment but also certain characteristics of previous employment, such as frequent job hopping, that generates such “scars”. The analysis by Imdorf et al. thus not only reconfirms the negative scarring effects of unemployment known from earlier literature, but also “draws attention to the diversity of job insecurity” in hampering youth future career development (p. 109).
Pepka Boyadjieva and Petya Ilieva-Trichkova finally shift the attention from the employers’ side to that of young job searchers when investigating how far young people can exercise agency regarding their employment when analysing evidence from 81 semi-structured life course interviews in seven EU countries. Their findings show that there are various patterns of “realised agency”, be it by self-sustained agency of young people relying on themselves, enabling by state institutions or non-governmental organisations or support through family and friends. At the same time, depending on the nation-specific institutional design, institutional characteristics (such as deficient career and unemployment services or labour market policies) may equally hinder young people to realise agency (“unrealised agency”); in the worst case even leading to a “paralysation” in which young people feel unable to improve their situation.
The second part of the book, focussing on policies, is structured in a similar way as the first. It starts with a general, partly conceptual chapter by Ondřej Hora, Markéta Horáková and Tomáš Sirovátka which aims at the differentiation of different youth policy regimes regarding early job insecurity. Based on the distinction of four relevant policy fields – education and training, active labour market policies, employment protection and unemployment income protection – the three authors differentiate five ideal-typical policy regimes: the inclusive/universal (encompassing Scandinavian countries such as Norway), the employment centred/dualistic regime (e.g. Germany, Switzerland) – the liberal regime (UK), the sub-protective regime of many Southern European countries and the transitional regime mostly found in post-socialist societies. Following this conceptual part, the same authors apply this categorisation in the subsequent chapter to investigate how these regimes have been able to adapt to address early job insecurity in Europe in the nine project countries. Their findings suggest that there has been an increasing turn towards activation measures and a “work first” strategy, particularly in countries with least generous welfare systems, namely the liberal, the sub-protective and the post-socialist countries. Particularly in post-socialist countries, the authors fear that “given the generally less developed policies, lower capacity of institutions and the limitations stemming from fiscal discipline measures” (p. 176), there is little hope that the situation will change for good in the foreseeable future.
Following this general overview, the subsequent chapters focus on two basic policy measures respectively mechanisms by which the situation of youth has been addressed: the European Youth Guarantee (YG) and the European Social Fund (ESF). In their chapter on the vertical and horizontal coordination in implementing YG measures in Germany, Spain and Greece, Irene Dingeldey, Lisa Steinberg and Marie-Luise Assmann analyse secondary literature, official documents and findings from their own expert interviews with EU officials and stakeholders. They show that, while in the developed system of Germany, policy developments in unemployment-related measures have often followed a path-dependent track of “system refinement”, it was in Southern European countries, where there have been some more substantive changes in training policies and public employment services (“system building”), even though their horizontal coordination at the national level often was problematic.
Margerita Bussi, Bjørn Hvinden and Mi Ah Schoyen complement this perspective by an analysis of the degree to which ESF measures have been used to support youth as a specific target group and how effective these measures have been. Their analysis of official documents shows that the consideration of youth as a specific target group has varied considerably across time, and, only most recently, it has been given more and systematic attention. Further analyses highlight that the relative share of youth in ESF participations has converged across the nine project countries. Yet, that the degree to which such measures are supplemented by active labour market programmes at the national level as well as the way in which they reach different target groups strongly varies cross-nationally.
The final conclusion by the editors summarises the results of the previous chapters in a concise and policy-oriented way. The authors problematise that most of their previous results indicate that work-first policies are counter-productive and often push young people into “dead-ends” within the labour market (p. 233), yet are still often the dominant approach towards the problem of early job insecurity. While from a comparative perspective, inclusive and employment-centred employment regimes with their coordinated and effective policy orientations may be considered “examples for the other EU countries to follow” (p. 235), there are still insufficient governance networks and lacking financial personnel and financial resources that hamper policy progress in the sub-protective regime of Southern Europe and the transitional regime of post-socialist countries. The authors close with detailed recommendations for comprehensive policy approaches as well as for improving governance and enhancing the quality of measures.
Taken together, the book by Hvinden et al. undoubtedly represents a significant enrichment in the comparative literature on youth labour markets. It builds bridges between various areas which often have been disjointed in earlier works.
First, this is true for the methodological perspective. Even though it is particularly the second book (not under review here) that features extensive qualitative evidence, the book at hand already combines evidence from both sophisticated quantitative analyses with that of selected studies involving qualitative interviews, vignette studies, desk research and expert interviews. This multi-perspective approach allows to analyse the phenomenon of early career insecurity from various relevant angles, involving that of individual actors and their underlying rationales, but also that of employers and policy makers.
Second, the book impressively links findings from sociological and economic labour market research in the first part, with that of comparative policy research in the second part. The inclusion of institutions as possible explanatory factors in the micro-analyses, but also the consideration of individual employment and participation data in the “institutional part” makes sure that these two strands are not only discussed alongside each other, but are inherently connected.
Third, the book can be highly praised for not only contrasting the individual micro-perspective and the societal macro-perspective, but for also incorporating the level of firms and employers when analysing recruitment choices. This intermediate “meso-level” has far too often been a “black box” in earlier research into which particularly the chapter by Imhoff et al. in this book sheds some light.
Fourth and finally, despite the fact the book mostly uses the nation state as the reference for its analyses, the chapter by Michón demonstrates that there are relevant processes occurring at the transnational level, such as migration, that equally shape the labour market situation of young people, which warrant more attention in future studies.
Due to its many strengths, the book is a highly recommendable read for scholars from various disciplines engaged in the field of youth and labour market studies. At the same time, the strong policy orientation and the detailed recommendations in the final chapter make it also a valuable asset for policymakers both at the national and international level.
If there is anything lacking, then it may be a more dynamic perspective on labour market processes in the first part of the book. Here, most analyses draw back to either analyses of the EU-LSF or other own-administered surveys. Both are cross-sectional in nature and thus are only limitedly able to capture the individual dynamic of employment careers and trajectories. Especially if the focus is on the consequences of youth unemployment and job insecurity, longitudinal data could provide more insight into the dynamic shape of young people’s careers. Atypical work forms may then be also analysed more elaborately in terms of their often ambivalent nature as either ‘traps’ or ‘stepping stones’ respectively or even ‘bridges’ into the primary labour market in the medium-term. This is, however, no criticism related to the book by Hvinden as such. Comparative labour market researchers have long been aware of the problem that the number of long panel data sets that are truly comparable across countries is limited, and that the harmonised European Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), that in principle could provide such data, has only limited usefulness for longer periods of observation, due to its rotating design. It thus will require a more substantial advance in data collection at the pan-European level that will allow to fully capitalise on the impressive theoretical and empirical groundwork that this volume has laid.
