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5. Youth Unemployment

Th© youth unemployment rat© was n©arly ©qual to th© rat© of total unemployment until 1981 when th© employment situation worsened rapidly. Since 1981 young people have been subject to above-average unemployment. While th© unemployment rat© of th© whole economy was 3.7% in 1982, the.ratę of youth unemployment climbed up 4.1% and by 1983 was already up to 5.7%. (Biffl,

p.10)

The proportion of the unemployed below age 25 in the stock of the unemployment register.increased from 24.3% in 1980 to 28.8% in 1982, despite the fact that youth unemployment was not as explosive in Austria as in the other Western industrial economies.

A good indicator for the risk of losing a Job is the ratio of the number of people becoming unemployed to the total number of employed and unemployed in a year. The figures indicate that young workers run an overproportional risk. It is interesting to notę that it is especially the people between 20 and 24 years old for whom the probability of losing their job is highest. Since 1983 the 15- to 19-years-old people have also belonged to the high-risk group (see table 1).