Insight: Young Jobless on the Rise in Europe's Rich North
REUTERS.COM: At 29, Samira Ahidar just got a permanent job, her first.

Ahidar, who still lives with her parents, dropped out of school a decade ago and her adult life has been dominated by the search for work. She would still be jobless if it were not for a job creation scheme that employs her at an elderly care home.

"I've no idea where I'll be in five years time," said Ahidar, dressed in an orange apron that comes with her new role. "It is so hard to find work, you feel like giving up."

Ahidar does not live in Greece or Spain, countries where as many as one in two young people are without work, but in the wealthy Belgian port city of Antwerp. With its stunning 16th-century Gothic houses, the city is a world centre for diamond trading and boasts a cutting-edge fashion industry. It also has a fast-growing number of unemployed twentysomethings.

Youth unemployment is notoriously a problem of southern Europe. What is less obvious, as the euro zone slips into its second recession in just three years, is the scale of the problem in the north. » | Robin Emmott and Robert-Jan Bartunek | ANTWERP, Belgium | Friday, September 21, 2012

Failing Dreams: California Faces Its Own Great Depression

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: It is less than 20 miles from the pristine surfing beaches of the California coast to a scene of Third World deprivation.

In Skid Row, a grimy pocket of downtown Los Angeles, the prostrate forms of homeless people lie strewn across the pavements.

The lucky ones have tents for shelter but others make do with a sliver of cardboard for a bed and a supermarket trolley to carry their rags.

At the last police count 1,662 people live on these streets, twice as many as a year ago.
And now amid the drug addicts and the drunks there are families who not so long ago had homes and ordinary suburban lives.

“Los Angeles is re-experiencing the Great Depression,” said Rev Andy Bales, who runs the nearby Union Rescue Mission shelter. “This is the worst I have ever seen it and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. This is all these people have as a last resort and I think there’s going to be over 2,000 by Christmas.

“I don’t think people around the world understand just how bad it is here.”

California – the Golden State, the world’s eighth largest economy - is spluttering and stalling and for many the dream life is turning increasingly sour. » | Nick Allen, Los Angeles | Friday, October 14, 2011

Jobless Millions Signal Death of the American Dream for Many
THE OBSERVER: Even the criminals have fallen on hard times in America's poorest city as the long-term unemployed struggle to keep a grasp on normality

Union members hold up "I want to work" placards as they join a protest of several thousand people demanding jobs outside City Hall in Los Angeles on August 13, 2010. Photograph: The Observer
Richard Gaines is one of the best-known faces on Camden's Haddon Avenue. It is a rough-and-tumble street, lined with cheap businesses and boarded-up houses, and is prey to drug gangs. Gaines, 50, runs a barbershop, a hair salon and a fitness business. He works hard and is committed to his community. But Haddon Avenue is not an easy place to make a living in the best of times. And these are far from the best of times.

Just how badly the great recession has struck this fragile New Jersey city, which is currently the poorest in America, was recently spelled out to Gaines. In happier times – whatever that might mean for a city as destitute as Camden – local businesses on Haddon Avenue could at least rely on a bit of trade from those who made their money on the street.

Young men bought flashy clothes and got sharp haircuts and always paid in cash. But no longer. The economy is now so bad in Camden that even the criminals are struggling and going short. "Even the guys who got money from illegal means really don't want to spend it," Gaines said.

Such a development, though, is just a snapshot of the deep problems still hitting the wider American economy. Growth rates are stuttering and a recovery is struggling to take hold. It may even now be showing signs of going backwards again, as countries such as Germany start to power forward. Joblessness has taken hold in America, with the numbers of long-term unemployed reaching levels not seen since the Depression of the 1930s. The figures are frightening and illustrate a society that remains in deep trouble.

The headline jobless figure of 9.5% is bad enough but does not begin to convey the problem as it fails to measure those who have stopped looking for work. Over the past three months alone more than a million Americans have fallen into that category: effectively giving up hope of finding a job and dropping out of the official statistics. Such cases now number some 5.9 million and their ranks are likely to grow as millions more find their jobless status becoming a permanent state of hopelessness. Surveys show that with each passing week on the dole their chances of finding a job get slimmer.

Though corporations, especially in the banking sector, are posting healthy profits, they are not hiring new workers. At the same time, government cuts are sweeping through city and state governments alike, threatening tens of thousands of jobs and slicing away at services once thought vital. Schools, street lighting, libraries, refuse collection, the police, fire services and public transport networks are all being scaled back. >>> Paul Harris | Sunday, August 15, 2010

Tensions Rise as Jobless Migrants Are Blamed for the Pain in Spain
TIMES ONLINE: The food bank in Vic, 40 miles north of Barcelona, occupies an old bakery in a side street. Each day hundreds of unemployed stream in to collect handouts of bread, milk, pasta and other necessities. The overwhelming majority are immigrants, predominantly Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans who flocked to Vic in the past few years to work on building sites or in the huge pig farms and meat factories that surround the town and give it its distinctive smell.

At least 10,000 came, swelling Vic’s population by a quarter. They did the hard, dirty work and were welcomed. Not any more. Half lost their jobs when Spain’s construction bubble burst in 2008 and brought the good times to an abrupt end.

A deeply unpopular €15 billion (£12.7 billion) austerity package rushed through parliament yesterday will make life even harder. On top of that, the immigrants are now the target of Platform for Catalonia, Spain’s equivalent of the BNP, which is based in Vic. “Control immigration — stop the crisis,” its leaflets proclaim.

“They insult us. They say maybe we’re the cause of the crisis, that we take their jobs. It’s not fair and it’s not nice,” said Mercy Omoroagbon, 30, as she collected her handout. She arrived from Nigeria in 2002, lost both her cleaning jobs last year and now lives off the charity of friends.

“They say the Spanish can’t work because of the immigrants. It’s not true. We did the work the Spanish didn’t want or wouldn’t do,” said Joy Ekechukwu, 33, another Nigerian who came to Spain 11 years ago, lost her factory job and now struggles to support her two young children. Read on and comment >>> Martin Fletcher | Friday, May 28, 2010

The Czech Republic Pays for Immigrants to Go Home
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Unemployed Guest Workers and Their Kids Receive Cash and a One-Way Ticket as the Country Fights Joblessness

Prague -- During its manufacturing boom earlier this decade, the Czech Republic wooed immigrants with plentiful jobs and comparatively higher wages. Now the Czech government is paying them to go back home.

Four years ago, Uyanga Ganbold migrated from Mongolia to Plzen, an industrial hub 60 miles south of Prague, with dreams of a European education for her two children. But she lost her job assembling Panasonic televisions and is taking the government's offer of a one-time payment of €750 ($992), triple her monthly wages. "I've never held that much money in my hands all at once," said the petite 34-year-old before leaving in mid-April.

Trin Van Pham is a harder sell. The Vietnamese immigrant lost his factory job with Czech auto maker Skoda in December, but turned down a similar package to leave. "It's just a little bit of money," compared with the $11,000 debt he took on to get here, says Mr. Pham, 30. Besides, he says, "if I go back, I'll also be looking for a job. It's not easy to get one there."

Their reactions underscore the difficulties of unraveling the global work force this once labor-strapped nation created as it grew into a manufacturing hub. In 2007, foreigners scooped up nearly 40% of the new jobs created in the Czech Republic. In the last five years alone, the number of immigrant workers doubled to nearly 362,000 by the end of 2008.

With demand for exports down, unemployment has soared to a two-year high of 7.7%. Economists say the rate could hit 10% by year's end, and there are signs rising joblessness is pushing some Czechs to apply for the low-wage work they once left to foreign laborers. The Czech economy is set to contract by 2% this year -- a sharp fall from a growth peak around 7% in 2006.

In February, the government, fearing crime, homelessness and immigrants overstaying visas, launched a $3 million program to pay newly jobless migrants to go home. The pitch: €500 per legal immigrant, €250 for children under 15, and the cost of the tickets home. >>> By Joellen Perry | Tuesday, April 28, 2009