Chapter 3: Labour Market Reform and Youth Unemployment

This chapter examines the interactions between the different institutional characteristics of labour markets in Europe, and the impact of the current recession on their unemployment structure and dynamics. Section 3.2 sketches the wide variety of unemployment experiences across countries in recent years, while Section 3.3 discusses the motivations for and effects of the existing configuration of labour market institutions, and possible reforms to them. Section 3.4 looks at youth unemployment, vocational training and apprenticeships. Section 3.5 trac es the impact of crisis on the resulting heterogeneous labour market configurations and discusses current pressure for reform in problem countries; and Section 3.6 concludes by reviewing desirable reforms and their potentially problematic features.