LOST
GENERATION
the rest of Europe 23- and 24-yearolds are already independent, and
often in positions of responsibility.”
In Almeria, a city on the Spanish
Mediterranean, 21-year-old Marta
Mullor struggles to accept that she
still lives with her parents, even
after completing her college degree
in translation and interpretation.
Since graduating in June, she has
applied for some 75 jobs per week,
she says, while receiving a disheartening number of responses: zero.
“Last year I would never have
imagined that I would still be living at my parents’ place,” she tells
El Huffington Post. “I thought
something would come my way.”
Nearly 27 percent of unemployed Spaniards have college
degrees, according to Spain’s General Workers Union. With so many
graduates out of work, a degree
can sometimes seem a liability, a
marker that identifies a job applicant as ill-suited for whatever
modest position may be available.
Many well-educated young Spaniards now maintain two résumés:
one that details their full background, for jobs related to their
studies, and another that omits a
degree or two, so as not to overwhelm potential employers seeking to fill a lower-level job.
HUFFINGTON
10.20.13
In Sub-Saharan Africa and the
Middle East, the presence of a
large number of young people unable to find jobs that match their
training adds fuel to long-standing ethnic and religious conflicts
while sowing political discord.
The youth unemployment rate
hit 39 percent in Egypt last year,
as the country grappled with the
fallout from the Arab Spring.
In France, nearly one in four
would-be workers under 25 is now
officially unemployed, according
to the latest government figures.
In Great Britain, some 960,000
people in the same age group are
unemployed, or about one of every five. Overall, some 26 million
Europeans aged 16 to 24 are today
searching for a job, according to
recent government estimates.
The problem has even become
a spiritual issue: Pope Francis recently declared that youth unemployment amounts to “one of the
most serious evils that afflicts the
world these days,” putting it alongside “the loneliness of the old.”
“The young need work and hope
but have neither one nor the other,
and the problem is they don’t even
look for them any more,” Pope
Francis said in an interview with
the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. “They have been crushed by
the present. You tell me: Can you
live crushed under the weight of