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Europe examines ways to tackle youth unemployment
November 13, 2013, 10:09 am

Unemployment in the eurozone remains too high, the IMF has warned [Getty Images]

Unemployment in the eurozone remains too high, the IMF has warned [Getty Images]

Hoping to reverse persistent unemployment on the continent, 24 leaders from Europe nations expressed confidence that the economic situation in their respective countries would improve over the course of the next two years.

Meeting at the Youth Unemployment Summit in Paris on Tuesday, the leaders and their labour ministers reiterated that they needed to step up their efforts for recovery, for growth and jobs, for open trade and for fairer taxation.

French President Francois Hollande said: “The future of a generation is at stake, a generation that has been hit by unemployment for years now, and with the economic crisis, this generation feels even more uncertain about its future, almost hopeless.”

According to the European Union’s Statistical Agency (EUROSTAT), nearly 25 per cent of young people aged 15 to 24 in the EU are without a job, which is more than double the unemployment rate among adults.

EUROSTAT had in August said that overall job recovery among eurozone countries  was happening at a very slow pace.

“Among the Member States, the lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Austria (4.6 per cent), Germany (5.4 per cent) and Luxembourg (5.7 per cent), and the highest in Greece (26.9 per cent in April 2013) and Spain (26.3 per cent),” it said in a semi-annual report.

The average unemployment rate for the 17-member eurozone is 12.1 per cent, roughly 19.4 million people.

In April, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expressed concern that income inequality had increased in past decades in many Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries and is also on the rise in many others. The challenges of growth, job creation and social inclusion are closely linked, the World Body said.

Source: Agencies