When there is a really deep economic crisis, unemployment is the worst hit for a society. It creates tragedies and for many people who lose their jobs, the rest of their lives can change. But this crisis is different from before, when you look at the numbers: the young are hit much harder.

During the longest and deepest crisis in modern times in Sweden, the 1990s crisis, half a million jobs disappeared. That crisis began as a banking and debt crisis, and then became a crisis of confidence for the Swedish government finances and the Swedish currency. In order to get out of the crisis, it was considered necessary that not least the export companies increased their productivity and competitiveness. There were cuts and streamlining. Half a million jobs disappeared.

Many elderly people got rid of the job in this rationalization wave. Some people who were in their 50s and older, and who had never imagined, or were prepared to, apply for a new job, never returned to the job market.

The financial crisis shorter than expected

In the recent crisis, the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, it was just like in the 1990s, the manufacturing industry and the construction industry suffered. By then, the system of staffing companies and temporary employment had spread, and in this way, young people without a permanent job were hit harder.

But the crisis became more brief than imagined. Scania, which this time counted on layoff support for September and still plans to give notice, broke that crisis plan three months in advance and started in full already in March 2009, just half a year after the crisis broke out.

And now we see the crisis of young people to a completely different extent. The industries that are most in need, such as hotel and restaurant and trade, are the industries where young people begin their working lives, where nowadays many people had also expected to start their summer jobs.

Dark figures about how young people are affected

As can be seen in SVT's business cycle, 30,000 were notified or laid off in those industries. Still, these are numbers that only cover part of reality. Many people work in forms of employment such as hourly work, where the employer does not need to give notice or leave to get rid of staff they do not need.

Unemployment is already at 11 percent for young people, compared with eight percent for the total labor market.

The advantage young people have is that they have an easier time coming again. But it, just like everything else in this crisis, is based on the fact that the world is struggling with the virus now, that there will not be a major second wave of viruses and shutdowns in the fall, and that some kind of economic wheel is starting to roll.

The virus sets the agenda

But if it takes too long, and the crisis gets deeper in more industries, and the tourism industry in its current form is able to be knocked out and may have to completely change shape, then it can be difficult for young people.

And even harder, of course, for all the elderly who also work in these industries. And not least for all the entrepreneurs, often less, who feed on it.

But as important as monitoring how the business cycle develops, if you want to try to understand how things are going, is to follow how the virus develops.

It is the virus that sets the agenda, for everything from how many trucks are sold to how many tourists get to Skansen or Sylarna.

And that determines how many who dare to believe in their own future, how much they consume and of what, and how many jobs it gets from it.