Crushing unemployment among the young people in the EU

[Sheilbh]

How common are office temps in Yuroland?

Pretty common.  I was able to move back into London on a temping job.  But it's not terribly easy for graduates or young people in general to get into that either.  They've, mostly, little to no office work experience and there's loads of experienced admin assistants, office managers and the like who are looking for work and temping.

[The Larch]

How common are office temps in Yuroland?

What's an office temp?

[The Larch]

In case anyone's interested about the situation in Spain, here's a graph regarding number of employed people from 2005 until 2011 divided on educational level:



The blue line is for people with only elementary education, the red one for secondary education and the green one for tertiary education, grouping together those with uni degrees and advanced technical education.

It's pretty clear when the housing bubble exploded and who are the ones that got the ax after that.

[Admiral Yi]

What's an office temp?

Say someone goes on vacation for a month and you need someone to answer phones, or you have a big project and you need a bunch of people to sort through files.  Then your company calls up a temp agency which has a stable of people. 

Or even longer term, a company might go through a temp agency so they can avoid paying benefits.

[The Larch]

What's an office temp?

Say someone goes on vacation for a month and you need someone to answer phones, or you have a big project and you need a bunch of people to sort through files.  Then your company calls up a temp agency which has a stable of people. 

Or even longer term, a company might go through a temp agency so they can avoid paying benefits.

Understood and very common, but mostly for low level jobs only.

[Richard Hakluyt]

@Sheilbh - I'd be tempted to make it a requirement by law that interns are paid at least the minimum wage.

Concerning the rolling over of contracts, I'm fairly sure that there has been recent legislation which greatly shortens the time before a temp is entitled to the full set of benefits, ah.........here we are :

http://www.michaelpage.co.uk/content/18084/awr.html

No doubt there are loopholes for unscrupulous employers, but then, the BBC should not be an unscrupulous employer 

Heh, looks like there are loads of ways of getting around the new rules.

[Sheilbh]

@Sheilbh - I'd be tempted to make it a requirement by law that interns are paid at least the minimum wage.

I think it needs to happen.  Even if it doesn't immediately help more people being in work it does widen the gene-pool of interns which would be a good thing.  I think it would also cause companies to consider whether hiring someone would be better than simply having several unpaid interns.

Concerning the rolling over of contracts, I'm fairly sure that there has been recent legislation which greatly shortens the time before a temp is entitled to the full set of benefits, ah.........here we are :

I'd heard of that actually, it's a good step as far as it goes.  Hopefully it'll have an effect.

But I think the UK generally does have a flexible labour market where it is easy to fire people.  I don't know that a huge number of supply-side reforms, as Tory MPs are arguing for, would actually help that much.  The only ones I think could have an impact would be to regionalise the minimum wage and move to regional pay scales in the public sector rather than the national ones because I do think the public sector is crowding out the private in some parts of the country.

The real issues aren't easy to resolve.  There's no useful spending by the state like the Future Jobs Fund, or much capital investment - both of which are still possible even with austerity - and there's no export-led recovery because our biggest export markets are fucked.  In addition I think our austerity measures have been more unhelpful than they had to be.  I think deeper spending cuts would have been better than the VAT rise for example.

[garbon]

@Sheilbh - I'd be tempted to make it a requirement by law that interns are paid at least the minimum wage.

I think it needs to happen.  Even if it doesn't immediately help more people being in work it does widen the gene-pool of interns which would be a good thing.  I think it would also cause companies to consider whether hiring someone would be better than simply having several unpaid interns.

Yeah I think that makes sense as well. After all even if you are a student intern, that means you have to split time between school, an actual job that supports your college education/living accommodations and then your free internship to build your resume. Quite awful.

And then even more awful when you have a college degree and still have to take an unpaid position!

[Iormlund]

How common are office temps in Yuroland?

Only 7% of the contracts signed last month were of indefinite nature.

[The Larch]

How common are office temps in Yuroland?

Only 7% of the contracts signed last month were of indefinite nature.

He means "ETTs", not temporary contracts.

[Capetan Mihali]

How common are office temps in Yuroland?

The temp agency I worked for in Phila. was based in Zurich. 

[Josquius]

@Sheilbh - I'd be tempted to make it a requirement by law that interns are paid at least the minimum wage.

That would be good. Or perhaps a bit lower even so there is some incentive for people to hire interns but interns can still survive.

At the very least you shouldn't have your benefits cut off if you actually get up off your arse and doing something about trying to secure a job. That is just madness.

[Ideologue]

"Survive"?

Ha ha, silly Euro, you don't know what minimum wage is in America, do you?

[sbr]

Or what the word minimum means.

[Josquius]

To both of the above: