Characteristics and challenges of youth unemployment: Sweden Anders Forslund IFAU and Uppsala University Seminar , Fighting Youth Unemployment: Lessons from the Netherlands and Sweden 1

Introduction Youth unemployment a serious challenge, especially since research indicates that problems may be persistent Swedish youth unemployment is high! At the same time important to use not only unemployment to describe the youth labour market Also, easy to misinterpret the numbers 2

Youth unemployment – a measure of unsatisfied labour supply Unemployed not the same as jobless – an unemployed should also actively look fo a job and be prepared to accept job offers Hence, reasonable to count job-seeking full-time students as well as very young and very old job seekers This is done in the LFS, which gives the appropriate measure 3

Many caveats… A few examples: 20 % youth unemployment does not mean the 20 % of the young persons are jobless Necessary to take schooling and transfer systems into account when interpreting cross-country differences Apprenticeship systems Study grants 4

Swedish youth unemployment rate (15–24 years) 1990– Source: OECD

Swedish youth unemployment 1990–2013: Some comparisons 6 Source: OECD

But are we really interested in the unemployment rate? Probably, the interest is in difficulties in labour market entry and ensuing social problems. It’s not obvious that the unemployment rate is a good measure of this Does not take distribution into account (a small share long-term unemployed) Does not take jobless non-seekers into account Makes no distinction between full-time students and others 7

Fraction of days (median) registered at PES by age 8 Source: PES, own computations

Swedish performance better in terms of employment/non-employment Swedish youth unemployment rate high, but Employment rates for young adults high NEET rate low 9

Employment rates, different age groups 10 Note: Share of population employed year 2011, per cent. Source: OECD.

NEET 2011, population shares, ages 15/16–24 11 Source: OECD

However, some young persons face problems Labour market problems for young persons primarily among high-school dropouts 12

Outflow from PES register to unsubsidised jobs, different groups 13

So, 14 Young Swedes do not, on average, face severe labour-market related problems The group is heterogeneous; problems to a large extent concentrated to high-school dropouts Hence, any policy should be targeted at those at risk, not the whole young population