Why would Britain desire a Latin employment market?

Anyone who has spent time living or working in Latin Europe discovers what is wrong with a certain structure of the employment market. The young simply cannot get regular jobs.

It’s not just minimum wages, it’s not just heavy taxes upon employing anyone - tho’ of course those don’t help. It’s the employment protections. The costs of getting rid of someone who doesn’t work out. Anyone who also manges to recall their own starting out days will know that there are usually a number of those mistakes made on both sides - square pegs hired for round holes and so on. A certain try it and see is required for all to gain employment where desire and talent meet requirements.

The effect of this is a completely bifurcated employment market. Those with those fully contracted and protected employments. Then those who cannot gain access to those employment rights and so exist in a - sometimes decades long - world of short term contracts without said rights. It is, obviously, the young and untried who suffer most, as individuals, from this. The economy as a whole suffers badly and not just from that effect upon the young. For anyone who has gained a fully contracted employment is unlikely to be willing to leave it. The mobility, flexibility, of the entire labour force is thus impinged upon.

The overall unemployment rate across all age groups is 5%, but for those aged 16-24 it is 16.2% – up from 14.2% a year ago, and one of the highest in Europe.

Why is anyone trying to make the British employment market more Latin?

Tim Worstall