In response to a piece in the New York Times about Spain’s growing unemployment problems, New N Economics has published a couple of interesting charts showing the growth of total and youth (15-24) unemployment in 25 countries between January and October 2009 using Eurostat data. The post notes that whilst Spain has had a 32% increase in youth unemployment in this period, rising to a total of 49.2%. Worryingly Ireland had the largest increase, with a 52.7% increase (and now has the second highest youth unemployment rate of the 25 countries compared). Moreover, Ireland now has the third highest total unemployment rate at 12.8% (only Spain and Latvia fair worse). The concern in terms of future talent is the extent to which the rapidly growing youth rate will translate into brain drain emigration.
Unemployment for different countries, Jan and Oct 09
Unemployment in different countries for 15-24 yr olds, Jan and Oct 09
Rob Kitchin
Ireland after NAMA 
January 4, 2010 at 12:10 pm
nice post…though Irish unemployement rate is a little bit high
January 6, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Eurostat statistics…well I was surprised to see that Poland is doing so well, so I decided to check it…
GUS-polish cso report for 10.09 is giving 11.4 %rate of unemployment(important to note that it’s total of registered unemployment which is around 2% to 4% less than a real rate) and giving a fact that those who will register in January will have a dole higher 20% than those registered at the end of the year, stats will go up soon.So wait Ireland I am sure your going to be no 4 in January .
January 10, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Did the our Great Leader not allow the UK figure to be published? Or are we now an irrelevance? Or perhaps we have full employment.
January 10, 2010 at 7:04 pm
I think the UK is not in the chart as it runs slightly behind the others in reporting in the Eurostat data. In Jan 09 total unemployment is listed as 2.123m by Sept 09 it was 2.456m. The charts above include Oct, but because there was no UK Oct data it was left out along with Estonia, Greece, Turkey, Lithuania, Norway and Romania.
December 8, 2010 at 12:00 pm
[…] how, despite the mounting evidence of the acute effect the recession has had on young people – high unemployment amongst 15-24 year olds, rising emigration rates amongst the under-25s – the Government has […]