Methods of reduction of unemployment among youths in the Federal Republic of Germany and in Europe

The research concerning unemployment among youths agrees for the most part with respect to the fact that they describe the ambitious goals of such programmes as having failed.1 This paper shall aim to find, based on a thorough analysis of the case of the Federal Republic of Germany, if, and if so, why, have the relevant programmes, published since the 1970s, failed. In order to be able to evaluate the methods of the employment market policy, these must be analysed against the background of the broad context of the modern professional society, because if politics concerning the reduction of unemployment among youths fail to consider the societal and time-historical framework, then they will be sentenced to collapse. The goal of the paper, hence, is to consider equally the political efforts as well as the needs and characteristics of present-day youths along with the values and behavioural patterns within the present-day professional society presenting itself under the banner of a globalised information society, and whose development in terms of employment policy and demographics had forced it to undergo a transformation into a society of immigrants. At the centre of the analysis stands the Federal Republic of Germany. Their history in the field of employment support policy for youths dates back to the times of the Weimar Republic2, offering thus rich material for an evaluative longitudinal analysis of the executed activities. Furthermore, conservative and socialdemocratic governments in the post-war period alternated, so that in this respect clearly the effectiveness of alternative political programme schemes can be sketched. A third reason speaking for the focus on the Federal Republic of Germany is finally found in the basic re-structuring of the social policy of federal Germany after the Reunification, through the introduction of social codes (Germ. Sozialgesetzbuch) on the one hand, and the enthusiasm of the red-green federal German government for youth policy with the immediate action programme JUMP from the year 1999 on the other hand. A socio-scientific reflection, on the one hand evaluating the success of efforts of the job market policy, but on the other hand seeking to make suggestions as to their improvements, cannot avoid comparing the subject of its analysis - the federal German efforts at the reduction of unemployment among youths spanning the recent decades - with similar reference examples. Beside the methodological aspect of the high validity of a deep analysis, through consideration of external comparative examples, a second, purely factual, reason, speaks for an analysis considering more than one case: As a member state of the European Union, the Federal Republic of Germany is closely dependent on the policies of its neighbour countries, especially, however, the European Commission, since the foundation of the Union by virtue of the Treaty of Maastricht in the year 1992. Due to intense political exchange between the EU member states, it is imperative to expand the perspective of federal Germany using individual presentations of other EU member states on the one hand and the Europe-wide job market policy on the other hand. The countries, which will be of special interest in this respect, are in particular the United Kingdom, Italy, and the Federal Republic of Austria.