Who is Hit Hardest During a Financial Crisis? The Vulnerability of Young Men and Women to Unemployment in an Economic Downturn

By S. Verick. Social Science Research Network, 2009

249 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The current financial and economic crisis has resulted in the worst global recession since World War II. The subsequent destruction of jobs and increased duration of joblessness will ensure that unemployment across the world will continue to rise and stay stubbornly high for some time to come, well after the economy has begun to recover. Beyond this generalization, such downturns have more adverse implications for vulnerable segments of the population such as youth. As presented in this paper, data for both the current and previous financial crises reveals that young people are indeed hit hardest as reflected by rising unemployment rates, which persist long after the economy is growing again. In the wake of the present downturn, young men have been particularly affected, which has been driven by a range of factors including the high proportion of young men in heavily impacted sectors such as construction. In response to this situation, policymakers should utilize targeted crisis interventions that aim to keep youth employed where possible, while also assisting new entrants and those who have lost jobs find employment (or at a minimum stay attached to the labour force), particularly as the economy recovers.

Subfields: General Health Professions

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0f1f08dd1d90522abe44eaf1bc0c6220d3c61a11

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In General Health Professions

1. Ricarda Schmidl
2. Iyanatul Islam
3. Marco Caliendo
4. Marc Hooghe

Citations in the corpus

• The Great Recession of 2008-2009: Causes, Consequences and Policy Responses (2010, background): “14 See World Bank/IMF (2009) Global Monitoring Report, Washington DC, p.1. As the report puts it: ‘For poor countries, this is a crisis upon crisis. It comes on the heels of the food and fuel crises. The triple jeopardy of the food, fuel, and financial crises is pushing many poor countries into a da”
• Economic Crisis and Levels of Political Participation in Europe (2002–2010): The Role of Resources and Grievances (2015, background): “The financial and economic crisis that emerged in Europe in 2008 led to the loss of millions of jobs resulting in a rising unemployment rate (De Grauwe and Ji 2013; Verick 2009).”
• Youth unemployment rate and impact of financial crises (2012, unknown): “A partly similar approach was followed by Verick (2009) who, in order to better investigate the impact of the recent crisis on the labour market (especially on young men and women), also analyses the effects on unemployment of the past “Big 5 Crises”.”
• Youth unemployment and active labor market policies in Europe (2016, background): “…of termination when employing young workers, making the youth labor market situation more sensitive to demand-side fluctuations which was recently demonstrated in the aftermath of the financial crisis 2007/2008 (Verick, 2011; Bell and Blanchflower, 2010; Choudhry, Marelli, and Signorelli, 2012).”
• This Time It's Different? Youth Labour Markets during ‘The Great Recession’ (2012, unknown): “Again, 1 See, for example, European Commission (2009), and Verick (2009).”