Youth Unemployment and Its Educational Consequences

The problem of youth unemployment has become a serious dilemma throughout the western industrialized societies (Melvyn and Freedman, 1979). In this paper, I will focus specifically on youth unemployment in two countries, Australia and the United States, with particular emphasis on the relations between education and youth unemployment. To at least some politicians, the problem is essentially rooted in the alleged failures of the educational system. For example, the Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Fraser, has charged on several occasions that the Australian educational system simply does not qualify many youth for the substantial job vacancies that exist in that country (Colless, 1980; Fraser, 1980; Hoare, 1980). But there are several competing explanations for youth unemployment, and each of these has profoundly different implications for policy. The purpose of this inquiry is to explore the rather different histories of youth unemployment in Australia and the United States and to evaluate the causes of the problem as well as some possible solutions.!