In Germany it is common for young people to go from school to a apprenticeship (paid (but extremly little), Apprentices spend half the week at school the other half at the company), these can be anything from plumber, salesman to software developer. So they enter a company at the age of 17 and will often be employed full time when they finish, if not they still have a degree that will enable them to enter the job market on good terms. This is kind of a win-win situation, youth that did not qualify for university or dont want to go can jump right into a job and learn a profession. They will receive a dimploma from the chamber of commerce and even earn a little bit of money. For the companies, the workers are relatively cheap while they are trained, and they will not only receive pratical training in the company, but also a scholarly curriculum worked out by the chamber of commerce. In the last years we actually had the situation that companies cannot fill all their places for apprentices and some are actually looking to hire some from Spain.

It is. I think the reasons for it are pretty simple:

They didn't experience a huge housing bubble (like Spain) They don't have a big productivity problem (like Greece) Their government's finances weren't totally unsustainable (like Spain or Greece) They don't depend a great deal on tourism (like Greece). No one seems to want to go on vacation to a rioting and unstable country.

Hopefully things will improve for those countries... but it's pretty easy to be a pessimist given the situation.

This might be misleading. Germany has something named "mini job" or "400 euro job", where you are paid exactly 400 euro which barely covers the groceries and the rent for a room. A lot of young people have such a job, and this keeps the unemployment rate low.

It seems like it should be possible to run some economic analysis, at least at a high level, based on this type of data and the actions of the countries involved.

I also wonder if Europe has higher unemployment due to a lower frequency of "at will" employment. Hiring someone seems to be a much greater consideration in countries where it's difficult to let someone go. Poor performers are likely to stick around longer and impact the team much more.

Would employment be lower if at-will employment were more commonplace and lawful in Europe?

This is direct result of Euro currency - the strongest economy gets even stronger. Greece, Spain, etc. were producing low quality goods, but they were cheap. Now they are as expensive as better German products. That's why sane governments (UK, Sweden) stay away from Euro - not to kill export.

Clever move from Germany and prescription for the disaster (collapse of EU - that' optimistic and would help Europe to recover, or less optimistic like war) when people realize how they were cheated.

Greece, despite misarable situation, is still buying war ships... from Germany.

Considering that Germany is essentially the ECB -- no, it's not. As a lender of last resort, the ECB has failed. It has failed to acknowledge to lessons taught by history; and it has failed to look itself in the mirror now. Germany reaped the benefits of having small economies join the EU; now they refuse to take full responsibility; hell, they refuse to even allow, say, 4% core inflation for a couple of years to help the struggling economies.