Think American Youths Have it Rough? Try Spain

Being young and looking for a job in the United States is hard. But it could be worse. You could be Spanish, where the youth unemployment rate is 40%. That’s right. Forty. Percent.

Or if you’re more worried about your generation’s comparative unemployment, thank your lucky stars you’re not living in Scandinavia, especially Sweden where the youth joblessness is quadruple the rate among those older than 25. (These surveys should come with a grain of salt on the side, because different countries’ ways of measuring and determining unemployment can help to skew international comparisons.)

Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

If you’re wondering why this matters, read Don Peck’s Atlantic article about the long-term implications of joblessness on young generations. It’s not just the lasting dampening of wages, it’s also the various psychological effects of protracted post-graduate years spent idle, angry and frustrated. The OECD projects youth unemployment to stay above 15% for the next two years in the United States, while the Congressional Budget Office expects overall joblessness to fall to about 8%. That would keep the above ratio steady for the next 20 months or so.

But once again, things could be much worse. You could be young and in Spain or Sweden, where youth joblessness is expected to surpass 40% and 30%, respectively, in the next year.