“Change has been so fast and so drastic
as to be unprecedented in the post-war era;
Europe faces the possibility of a ‘lost generation’.”
No doubt, youth unemployment is one of Europe’s greatest challenges at the moment and consultancy firm McKinsey describes the journey of young Europeans from education to employment as “rocky”. The UK’s unemployment rate is under the average of the EU zone (Office for National Statistics, 2014), but prospects are clearly far from positive. Many young people in the UK complain about the labour situation and are faced with greater competition and decreased job security. According to the McKinsey survey, there are many companies which do not seem to find the right candidates to fill their open positions and many employers complain that graduates do not have the desired skills.
So graduates and companies reported likewise that they experience difficulties in finding the right job or candidate. What is going wrong here? Where can graduates, companies, and policy makers improve in order to find a way out of this depressing situation? Is it the lack of jobs, a lack of skills, and market-oriented education, or simply a problem of coordination? These questions and more have been addressed within the recently published report by McKinsey and we find that they come up with novel points and a comprehensive picture of this complex problem.