Being unemployed for long periods as a young adult can seriously affect your chances of integrating into the job market, a new study claims.
The Economic Council of the Labour Movement (ECLM), a Danish think-tank, compared the careers of those who were unemployed for long periods in 1994 against those who had a job at the time, and found that those who were unemployed now earn between 50,000 and 56,000 kroner less than their peers who were in work.
ECLM also claims that the study shows that young people who are out of work for long periods find it much more difficult to enter and remain in the workforce later in life, with those unemployed in 1994 being far more likely to be unemployed or on early retirement today compared to their then-employed peers.
“The explanation is that the long term unemployed from 1994 have not experienced the same rise in salary as others because they had a bad start in the employment market. And that counts whether you worked in a warehouse in 1994 or were a newly qualified real estate agent,” Mie Dalskov Pihl from ECLM told metroXpress.
Despite some criticism from the Confederation of Danish Employers on the validity of the study, Pihl argues that the current generation of youths face a similar future.
“Youth unemployment can have a permanent effect on the individuals in question as well as greater society,” Pihl said. “Both unskilled workers and the newly-educated cannot find work today and we canÂ’t just shrug our shoulders and think itÂ’s going to fix itself. The risk is that many people face an awful start to their careers.”
Another recent study by ECLM revealed that 26,000 of the approximately 80,000 young people who have neither been in education or work in the past six months are from ethnic minority groups.
The problems facing ethnic minority groups was backed up by another study by government research organization, AKF, which showed that individuals from these groups were twice as likely to drop out from vocational training as their Danish peers. About 55 percent of ethnic minority students dropped out of their training last year.
According to AKF’s integration researcher, Hans Hummelgaard, the figures indicate a need for urgent action.
“We need to find solutions to get young immigrants and their children involved in something active,” Hummelgaard told Jyllands Posten. “If they don’t get an education, they risk remaining on cash welfare benefits as adults. Jobs that they could have had without an education are leaving Denmark on a daily basis.”
While the social and integration minister, Karen Hækkerup (Social Demokraterne) said the government was working on reforms to lower youth unemployment levels, opposition party Venstre (V) criticised the current government for not making use of the former Venstre-led government’s proposals on how to get youths from ethnic minority groups back into work.
Speaking to Jyllands-Posten, V integration spokesperson Inger Støjberg argued the current government could be making better use of wage subsidies and internships instead of removing incentivised welfare benefits.
“The government is heading in the wrong direction by abolishing cash welfare benefits as they have made it less attractive for immigrants to get a job,” she said.
