Lisbon has made an indirect but noticeable contribution to Europe's recovery, notably in the employment sector which they said has always been regarded as the continent's weak spot. According to CER, the EU economies created an estimated 7 to 8 million jobs in 2006-2007 alone. Huge improvements were registerd among older workers and women.
I have just finished reading the report and still have to dissect its contents. I cannot at this time make a critical analysis of what the CER has so far advanced in that report.
In France, Italy, Sweden, and some of the new member-states, more than one in five young people is looking for a job.
That plain statement, which can only be understood to mean that 1 in 5 of the 15-24 age-group is looking for a job, is (on the part of people who know what the stats mean) deliberately misleading. It refers to an unemployment rate of over 20%. That is not 20% of all people in that age group, it is 20% of the labour force, ie those who are (in employment + jobseekers). This is an age group where large numbers are in education, and where, according to national cultural differences, it may be more or less customary for students to have part-time jobs on the side. The size of the labour force (and therefore the unemployment rate) depends on this difference. Baldly stating that more than one in five youngsters is looking for a job (when in France, for example, it's actually less than one in ten), is simply setting out to blacken the picture the better to promote an ideological agenda.
