Eurostat recently published figures which do not shine a good light on the Grand-Duchy: 24.7% of young people are unemployed. Galles asked the Minister of Labour, Dan Kersch, how the government is planning to solve this problem.
About 20,200 people were registered at the unemployment agency Adem on 31 May. Among them about 2,030 young people under 25.
Minister of Labour, Dan Kersch stated: “If the percentage of people looking for employment increased by a dramatic 33% over a one-year period, this increase is even more dramatic for people under 25 at 59.1%. As Minister of Labour, I have no interest in embellishing such a problematic situation”
The coronavirus crisis is hitting young people especially hard when it comes to unemployment.
According to Adem’s most recent calculations, the youth unemployment rate is currently stabilising at about 12.8%, which according to Kersch is already way to high.
However, the rate is also much lower than the one cited by Eurostat: 24.7%
“Young people aged between 14 and 25 in Luxembourg are often still attending school or university, and are not part of the active population. We are aware that compared to other countries, we have a lot of, let’s call them young adults, who are still at school. We don’t see this a reason for concern, quite on the contrary”
Kersch explained that Eurostat did not take this Luxembourgish particularity into account. 32 councillors are currently exclusively taking care of young people looking for work. However, the topic should not be neglected: Over a one-year period, Adem could only offer half as many apprenticeships in the month of June.
The minister also expects that youth unemployment will be a topic during the upcoming tripartite.
“I agree with Mr Galles: We have to talk about the insecurity of employment contracts. On one hand the fixed-term contracts, but on the other hand and mainly the much more complicated interim contracts, which affect a lot of young people. I expect that this will be a topic of discussion during next Friday’s tripartite”
Kersch expects the social partners to offer concise ideas during these discussions.
