The authors analyze three major hypotheses for the worsening youth employment situation in Europe: demographic, cyclical, and structural; and review the advantages and disadvantages of various policies designed to lessen youth unemployment. (SJL)

Reviews the youth unemployment problem and focuses on employment and training programs. Discusses, in separate sections, the causes of the youth employment problem; demand-related causes; supply-related causes; the effectiveness of strategies for assisting disadvantaged youth; linking young workers with employers; and implications for policy. (KH)

Recent evidence has emerged that in Britain, like the United States, many children below minimum school-leaving age are working. Often, the work is illegal. Research in the United States suggests that many risk accidents and other hazards to health. Evidence from Britain is of a more fragmentary nature, but enough exists to suggest a need for…

Current federal youth employment programs have failed to meet the employment needs of disadvantaged youth. Programs should be revised to: (1) require all participants to receive remedial academic instruction on the high school level; and (2) train participants in at least one vocational skill for which there exists a local demand for youth…

This policy analysis paper describes the alternative actions available at the federal policymaking level to enhance youth employment using one institutional mechanism: vocational education. The first section on source and background of the youth employment problem provides a context within which to view the policy problem being addressed. The…

This paper reviews the nature of the youth employment problem by considering its causes, deterioration in the employment situation of black youth, and the number of youth facing serious employment problems. Section 1 discusses reasons for concern regarding youth unemployment. In section 2 are related normal as well as harmful experiences due to…

Addresses the dilemma facing youth on employment and offers perspectives on the role of the curriculum in approaching this problem. Discusses and cites examples of employment options. Also highlights the personal needs that are associated with work. (ML)

This group of articles discuss a variety of studies related to vocational training and youth unemployment in both developing and developed nations. (SSH)

This paper examines the theoretical basis for "excessive" job mobility among certain groups of young workers that may lead to spells of unemployment and low lifetime earnings. An economic model of job findings by young workers is used to describe "normal" behavior and "pathological" cases of excessive job mobility and unemployment. Emphasis is on…

This article cites six sources which present planning and implementation strategies for major government-sponsored training programs. These federal programs were designed to allocate funds to modernize training facilities and to provide employment skills for the hard-to-employ youth in six European and Asian nations. (SSH)

Traditionally, the road to good jobs for young persons in West Germany has been the "dual system" of vocational education and training (VET), similar to apprenticeships in the United States, but practiced on a much wider scale. A large percentage of West German youth usually enter such programs after high school in order to prepare for…

Suggests that work training programs based on the concepts of democracy and entrepreneurship may facilitate improvements in employment opportunities for disadvantaged and minority youth. Attributes unemployment to deficiencies in the current economic and social structure, and discusses design and implementation problems in current employment…

According to the Advisory Board of the National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce (EQW), young people in the United States are losing out in the job market, too often having to settle for intermittent, part-time jobs, routinized work, low wages, and few if any benefits. This circumstance has been the result of a net loss of 1.65…

In times of economic recession, dollars for job training and job placement programs grow scarcer, and those that are available tend to go to middle-class workers who are displaced or temporarily unemployed. The structurally unemployed--primarily the poor, the less educated, and minority youth--find it harder to compete for the needed training, and…

Education is constantly criticized for its "failures"--its "failure" to produce literate graduates, its "failure" to prepare students for the jobs of future technology, and its "failure" to reduce unemployment and establish equity for all students. However, these "failures" are not solely those of…