Migrant youths make up nearly half of the unemployed youth in France, according to statistics gathered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The figures were released at a workshop organised by the OECD and the Association of Economic and Financial Journalists (AJEF) and reveal that 2.85 million individuals aged 15-34 are not in employment, education or training — also known as “NEET” — and that 40 percent of them either were born abroad or were born in France to at least one immigrant parent, Le Figaro reports.
As a result of the statistics, the European Union (EU) has called on France to do more in order to better integrate individuals from migrant backgrounds into the labour market.
In total, the labour pool of French youth is around 15.75 million individuals, leading to a rate of labour inactivity around 18.1 percent.
The OECD also released similar figures for other countries including Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden with averages of the rate of NEET individuals being lower for natives than for those with a migration background.
Unemployment in Sweden, in particular, has shown to be far higher in recent years among migrants than among natives, with a report from last year by the Swedish Public Employment Service revealing that while overall employment had decreased, there remained a large gap between migrants and native Swedes.
In one of Sweden’s most heavily migrant-populated major cities, the southern city of Malmö, the effect has been clear, with the city having nearly double the unemployment rate compared to the Swedish national average.
In Germany, the country’s Federal Employment Agency (BA) reported last year that migrants made up more than half of the recipients of “Hartz IV”, the German welfare benefit. The highest number of migrants on benefits are originally from Syria, with a total of 584,000 Syrians receiving welfare.