The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Commission are urging European countries to address youth unemployment.

The OECD’s Deputy Director for Employment, Labor and Social Affairs, Stefano Scarpetta, stressed that European countries should take action to discourage the rising unemployment rate among young people. He said the EU’s youth unemployment rate has reached a dangerous point, noting that 45 percent of Spanish young people were jobless in the second half of this year.

The European Commission said that in the EU, the youth unemployment rate stood at 22 percent as of October last year, up 16 percent from the same month in 2007.

The EU posted an unemployment rate of nine-point-six percent at the end of last year. Advanced countries posted an average unemployment rate of eight-point-two percent in October this year, down one tenth of a percentage point from a month earlier.