Unemployment

Unemployment has unleashed an emergency in the European workforce, both from the threat to the continent's economic growth, and from the high risk that faltering Eurozone social cohesion will crumble.
Presseurop

In the European Union, youth unemployment currently ranks very highly on the policy agenda. Given the long-term risks of extended unemployment spells, the importance of tackling youth unemployment can hardly be overestimated. Youth are the potential and future of every country and governments with a long-term vision for welfare and development in their countries are concerned with the best ways to integrate the young people into the labour force. The topic has been receiving media attention and has been discussed in many business and policy forums.
Kiel Institute for the World Economy

For the first time, in November 1997, as part of the Luxembourg Process, a set of Guidelines was established in the field of employment as part of the European Employment Strategy, which was included in the Amsterdam Treaty. In 2002, the European Council of Lisbon introduced the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) with regard to the abovementioned Guidelines in the Member States.

 
OMC is an essential instrument in the development of the European social model and is used by Member States to support the definition, implementation and evaluation of their social policies and to develop their mutual cooperation. A tool of governance based on common objectives and indicators, the method supplements the legislative and financial instruments of social policy. It is part of the implementation of the process of coordination of social policies, particularly in the context of the renewed Lisbon Strategy.

The European institutions proposed a set of Guidelines, consisting of general aims and measures with specific deadlines by which they should be implemented and translated into national and regional policies, such as the eradication of poverty and social exclusion, guaranteeing adequate and sustainable pension systems or providing accessible, high-quality and sustainable health care and long-term care.

In an effort to adapt to the Guidelines established, the Member States drew up the National Reform Programmes. Finally, an assessment, revision and control process has been set up by the European institutions, with benchmarks created in order to identify best practices and the results published in the Joint Annual Report on Employment.
Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung International Policy Analysis

Until the end of the 1960s, unemployment was very low in Europe and the talk then was of the "European unemployment miracle." The miracle came to an end in the 1970s, when unemployment steadily increased. It kept increasing in the 1980s. It appeared to turn around in the mid-1990s.
National Bureau of Economic Research

The Financial Crisis of 2008
The global financial crisis of 2008 has slowly yielded to a global unemployment crisis. The core debate in Europe has been how to solve the sovereign debt crisis and the resulting threat to Europe's banks. The argument that won the day, particularly among Europe's elites, was that what Europe needed was austerity, that government spending had to be dramatically restrained so that sovereign debt would not default.
Stratfor Geopolitical Weekly

Youth Unemployment
Record youth unemployment is emerging as the most urgent problem in the euro zone. There is little doubt that youth unemployment is a grave problem in Europe, a result not only of weak economic growth but also of inflexible labor regulations that make it hard for newcomers to break into the work force. The jobless rate among Europeans aged 15 through 24 in the euro area was 24% in March, up from 22.5% a year earlier.
New York Times

North-South Divide within the EU
Eurozone unemployment reached a record high of 12% in February (2013) with national statistics confirming the discrepancy between the more stable northern economies and the struggling southern ones. Figures released by the Eurostat agency showed there are 19 million unemployed people in the 17-nation euro area and 26.3 million in EU as a whole. The EU-wide joblessness rate clocked in at 10.9%. The figures highlight the differences between core and periphery euro states.
EUobserver

Unemployment Benefit Systems
With unemployment rates becoming persistently high in most European countries after the crisis, and with a lengthening of unemployment duration, reforms are becoming necessary to ease the trade-off between income smoothing and incentives to take up jobs. As unemployment benefit systems differ considerably across countries, and since they operate within heterogenous labour market and institutional contexts, desirable and feasible reform paths may differ considerably from one country to the other.
IZA Policy Papers Series

Youth Unemployment
European leaders have decided youth unemployment and the risk of social breakdown are among the toughest challenges they face and finding solutions will be a top priority for the coming months. EU ministers agreed earlier this year (2013) on steps to ensure people under the age of 25 receive an offer of work or work-related training as part of a €6 billion initiative on youth unemployment in the worst-hit corners of Europe.
Reuters

The European Employment Strategy
The European Employment Strategy within the framework of the European Strategy 2020, under the usual motto of “creating more and better employment”, has the following main objectives: achieving employment for 75% of people between 20 and 64 years of age; keeping the school leaving rate under 10% and managing to have at least 40% of people between 30 and 34 years of age completing post-secondary education; reducing the number of persons at risk of poverty and social exclusion by 20 million.
Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung International Policy Analysis

The euro area (EA17) seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 12.1% in March 2013, up from 12.0% in February. The EU27 unemployment rate was 10.9%, stable compared with February. In both zones, rates have risen markedly compared with March 2012, when they were 11.0% and 10.3% respectively. Eurostat estimates that 26.521 million men and women in the EU27, of whom 19.211 million were in the euro area, were unemployed in March 2013. Compared with February 2013, the number of persons unemployed increased by 69.000 in the EU27 and by 62.000 in the euro area. Compared with March 2012, unemployment rose by 1.814 million in the EU27 and by 1.723 million in the euro area.
Eurostat

The eurozone unemployment rate has hit a record high at 11.8% with 18.8million people out of jobs and youth unemployment at a new high. The highest rate was seen in Spain at 26.6% followed by Greece at 26% (recorded for September 2012). According to Eurostat, the unemployment rate increased in 18 of the EU member states, fell in seven and remained stable in both Denmark and Hungary.
Guardian