There are a number of causes of youth unemployment on many of which there is a fair
amount of consensus. The most significant is poor macroeconomic performance. Lack of
growth affects everyone in the economy and some groups are particularly hard-hit. In fact,
youth are more affected because youth unemployment tends to be super-cyclical. It
fluctuates stronger than adult unemployment (Ryan 2001).
The factors contributing to this higher cyclical volatility are several: young workers usually
have lower job protection. In addition, they are most likely to have gained less job-specific