Following a long phase of general full employment, an unexpected wave of mass unemployment hit West Germany, along with other Western countries, in the mid-1970s. Unemployment among young people received a particularly high level of public and political attention. These unaccustomed levels of youth unemployment, while relatively moderate from a global perspective, were at first viewed as symptoms of crisis, even though they would soon become the “new normal” in the country.

Thomas Raithel analyzed the development of youth unemployment in West Germany during the 1970s and 1980s as well as society’s perception of and fight against the phenomenon, for the first time from the perspective of contemporary history. The book Jugendarbeitslosigkeit in der Bundesrepublik. Entwicklung und Auseinandersetzung während der 1970er und 1980er Jahre [Youth Unemployment in the Federal Republic of Germany. Development and Debates during the 1970s and 1980s] appeared in October 2012 as Volume 105 in the series Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte.