ABSTRACT
The size and persistence of youth unemployment has become unacceptable in some European countries, particularly in Southern Europe. Stagnation in labour productivity, on the other hand, goes back to the 1990s and even worsened after the burst of the crisis. A further evidence is that labour market reforms in many countries introduced, over the past twenty years, a set of newly designed job contracts that allowed the use of temporary work. We describe these phenomena and countries heterogeneity in four dimensions: labour productivity, youth unemployment, EPL (Employment Protection Legislation) and temporary work, and their dynamics.
