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BUSINESS
SKILLS AND TRAINING
Text by SARITA RAO
Photography by MIKE ZENARI
ALL IN A DAY’S WORK Is Luxembourg’s unemployment record as good as it looks? With youth unemployment running at more than twice the rate of neighbouring Germany, do the kids of today have the right skills to tap into one of Europe’s fastest expanding economies?
U
nemployment is not a much talked about subject in Luxem bourg. Standing at 5.6%, according to the latest figures from the national statistics office Statec, it’s one of the lowest rates in Europe. But youth unemployment figures were just over 14% in January 2018, and suggest a slightly different story. Whilst youth unemployment in Luxembourg is still below the Eu ropean average, and nowhere near the 30% plus rates currently expe rienced in Spain and Italy, it is still higher than in Germany (6.6%) and the UK (12.4%). It could be argued it’s on the decrease too, peaking at 22.7% in 2014 and dropping three percentage points in the past year alone, but according to data on Trading E conomics, it’s expected to stay at the 13-14% level until at least
April 2018
2020, and youth unemployment still remains higher now than the longterm average of 10%. So is there a skills gap preventing some young people from working in a country which advertised 6,443 job vacancies at the end of February 2018? And is education failing to meet the standards required by in dustry or the private sector? “The education system plays a central role in building a strong basis for each young person. But adapting our education system is just one approach. The new digital economy represents new challenges and new opportunities we have to adapt to,” says Nicolas Schmit, the minister of labour and employment. A European Commission report on education and training in Luxem bourg published in 2017 found that
the performance of 15-year-olds in maths, reading and science was below the EU average and that early exit from school remained high. The previous year, an OECD report found Luxembourg had high levels of grade repetition at school, that vocational training was not aligned to the labour market, and that 60% of foreign-born residents have tertiary education versus 42.5% of native born residents living in Luxembourg.
PROMOTING ENTREPRENEURSHIP “Civil servant jobs offer job stability and a significantly higher salary than in the private sector. They’re highly valued by Luxembourgish society and still represent for most Luxem bourgers a sign of success,” says Julie Noirhomme, an executive