European voters have long been concerned about high unemployment rates. In fact, during much of the postwar period, European mass publics placed unemployment near or at the top of the list of most important problems facing their country (Anderson 1995). In Eurobarometer 41 (Spring 1994), for example, roughly 25 percent of European voters considered unemployment to be their country's most important problem (24.9%), followed by issues specific to individual countries (mentioned by 8.9% of respondents), and far ahead of crime, prices, immigration, or the environment. In the same survey, over 80% of respondents said that the unemployment situation in the country had stayed the same or gotten worse, and roughly two-thirds (66.6%) expected the employment situation to stay the same or get worse over the next twelve months. Similarly, Eurobarometer 45, taken in the spring of 1996, reveals high levels of anxiety regarding future unemployment trends throughout Europe. The level of agreement about the problem of unemployment across Europe is remarkable and attests to the fact that the secular trend toward higher unemployment that started in the 1960s has not been reversed; in fact, it has risen to the top of people's political concerns.

Unemployment is not a new phenomenon on the European continent, however. After all, the economic depression of the 1920s and 1930s affected Europe as much as the United States. And although European policy makers and citizens were in the fortunate position of witnessing times of almost full employment for over a decade following World War II, joblessness started to rise again in the second half of the 1960s and has been increasing ever since.