Downturn hits youth hardest - Sweden takes undesirable lead

It is always tricky for those presenting labour market statistics to keep track of temporary jobs and people changing back and forth between studies and work. Some countries use telephone listings to choose their study groups, but young people often only carry mobiles.
In their latest quarterly report, Statistics Sweden have written about the difficulties of comparing youth unemployment across European countries.

- Despite years of efforts to harmonise European statistics, the member countries retain different criteria and traditions. That means countries follow Eurostat guidelines in different ways, writes Daniel Samuelsson and Krister Näsén. In some areas certain countries don't follow Eurostat recommendations at all. Iceland use the age group 16 to 24 instead of 15 to 24, because Icelanders get their social security number at 16. Italy uses the same age group, but only because it is illegal for Italian 15 year-olds to work.

- The Netherlands list an additional requirement to the EU definition of unemployment. The Dutch say you not only have to be without work, available for work and actively seeking work to qualify as unemployed - you must also express a desire to work, says Daniel Samuelsson.

Five times higher

In Sweden in 2008 nearly five times as many 15 to 24 year-olds were unemployed compared to 25 to 74 year-olds. That is the greatest gap in Europe. Norway and Iceland come third and forth. Finland is number eight, with just over three times higher youth unemployment compared to the rest of the population. Denmark is number twelve. Could some of these differences be explained by varying methods of collecting data? Statistics Sweden thinks so, estimating the number of youth unemployed to be 9.000 fewer people if 15 year-olds were removed from the statistics. The other factors are too insignificant to calculate. 

How you select population groups throws up yet other variables. In statistics it is called the target population. Do you look at individuals or households?

The mobile telephone factor

- That is a relevant question when looking at youth unemployment, because it is common for students to live in collective housing. If you fail to include these, you risk underestimating the number of job-seeking students.
 The Nordic countries and Switzerland use individuals and not households for statistics, which should yield more precise figures. But how do you find those individuals? The Swiss use telephone listings, which only cover 90 percent of the population. Using telephone listings can also lead to an underrepresentation of youths, who usually only carry a mobile telephone.