You're being downvoted - probably - for blaming "former eastern-bloc countries" for the state of things in UK. Well, it's just not that simple. From purely economical point of view the recent arrival of labor from Eastern Europe was a positive, it added 0.25 percentage points to UK's growth (according to research done by Treasury). That's no surprise, since the immigrants are coming in for jobs (often for the low skilled jobs, since they don't know language enough to start a career in their field), so don't demand rents, education and healthcare right off.
Non-European immigrations affected jobs market negatively, yet only in two years of recent recession, in 2009 and 2010.
There are, of course, other, non-economical aspects, and here it's not so rosy.
This article touches the issue from many points of view:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10822956...
Then, there's Germany. The only country in Europe where young people have relatively no problems with getting a job. Why? Germans keep their job market closed, so that's seems like an easy answer. Yet, France and some others did the same, and it didn't help.
And surely, Germany is significantly stronger economically that the rest. However, they too had a period of high youth unemployment rates. So that isn't it either. However, in exactly that period they introduced Nationaler Pakt für. Ausbildung und Fachkräftenachwuchs (Vocational and Educational Training Pact) - a solution that allows young people to simultaneously work and study. It's not a system with no flaws, but it worked.
Source: http://www.worldcrunch.com/opinion-analysis/how-germany-beat...
That's a mischaracterisation of my argument. I am blaming the political elites, not the eastern bloc countries (who are blameless). If I had no qualifications and I suddenly no longer needed a masters degree to come to a country with a minimum wage 7 times that in my homeland - I'd be on the first flight there.
Your discussion regarding the situation in France and Germany is pertinent but widens the discussion beyond my narrow point.
Supply and demand is econ 101. If the supply of low wage labour goes through the roof, then wages are compressed for a section of the population (the young and low paid) that can ill deal with the effects.
Now you you might say, "well, we have the minimum wage in the UK" - but there are all kinds of tricks employers will use to circumvent this, and with high supply, they can more easily get away with this type of behavior. Finally, the minimum wage, is not actually a liveable wage for an independent adult in the UK in 2014 (despite protestations, I'm sure), and so offers little in the way of protection anyway.
Then, there's Germany. The only country in Europe where young people have relatively no problems with getting a job. Why? Germans keep their job market closed, so that's seems like an easy answer. Yet, France and some others did the same, and it didn't help. And surely, Germany is significantly stronger economically that the rest. However, they too had a period of high youth unemployment rates. So that isn't it either. However, in exactly that period they introduced Nationaler Pakt für. Ausbildung und Fachkräftenachwuchs (Vocational and Educational Training Pact) - a solution that allows young people to simultaneously work and study. It's not a system with no flaws, but it worked. Source: http://www.worldcrunch.com/opinion-analysis/how-germany-beat...