The Neither in Employment, nor in Education or Training (NEET) graph for Europe.

This is an excerpt from Bill Mitchell's post 'Europe – the deliberate wastage of its youth continues'.

It is almost unbelievable that the European Commission would deliberately run a policy regime that would generate this outcome.

Remember that the currency-issuing government always chooses the unemployment rate. In the European context, that is blurred by the creation of the common currency and the lack of fiscal capacity at the federal level.

It is clear that the ECB issues the currency and has been funding governments since the crisis (as I will write in a blog to come).

It is also clear that the European Commission has been imposing vicious austerity on to Member States – almost in direct proportion with the severity of the recession encountered in each State – which is madness in itself.

Taken together, the policy arms at the European Union level have created a situation where 33.5 per cent of Greeks of the age 25-29 years are in the NEET category – going nowhere, doing nothing, wasting away.

The proportion for Italy is 32.3 per cent, Spain 24.2, Ireland 19.4 per cent, Portugal 17.2 per cent.

Conclusion

There is no possible justification for this deliberate waste of labour resources.

And as I have said in the past – these effects endure across the generations.

Teenagers deprived of opportunities become young adults with inherited disadvantage. If that deprivation continues they enter the 25-29 years cohort – disadvantaged and starting to make families in poverty.

Many will never enjoy any labour market continuity and their children then inherit that disadvantage and so the impacts widen and stretch out across time.

This latest data shows that is definitely happening.

The principle policy response to the problem was the Youth Guarantee. Unfortunately, it was underfunded and poorly conceived – focusing on supply rather than job creation.

What is needed is large-scale job creation schemes – actual jobs at fair pay – funded by the European Commission. That will not happen and so in a year’s time I expect to be reporting on similar data trends.

Madness prevails in the European Union.