Zach Igglesden has been sending out dozens of job applications a week for the past year to companies across Britain. So far, he said, he has not even been invited to an interview.

Igglesden, 20, of Southend, east of London, finished secondary school two years ago and decided against pursuing a university education because he did not want to graduate with the burden of a student loan and no job.

His goal is relatively modest — to work as a sales assistant in a shop — but he said he had repeatedly been turned down because he lacked experience.

“It’s just very frustrating,” Igglesden said. “If you’re lucky, you get a reply, but mostly you don’t hear anything at all.”

To the roster of pain inflicted by the European debt crisis, add this: rising and persistent joblessness among young Britons. Though not at the level of troubled Eurozone countries like Greece and rooted in domestic problems as well, it has reached a point here that is setting off alarms across the political and economic spectrum.

Unemployment among British youths, defined as those 16-24 years old, rose above the politically sensitive threshold of 1 million in the third quarter, according to the Office for National Statistics. That is the highest it has been since 1992.

An estimated 20.6 per cent of British youths not pursuing a full-time education were without a job, an increase of 1.8 percentage points from the previous three months.

The problem is not confined to youths. Total unemployment in Britain rose by 129,000, to 2.62 million, in the third quarter, bringing the jobless rate to 8.3 per cent, the highest in 15 years.

Youth unemployment has been climbing in many European Union member states as economies struggle and governments impose stringent austerity plans. Spain’s youth unemployment rate reached 45 per cent in the second quarter, the worst among EU members, followed by Greece’s 42.9 per cent rate, according to Eurostat, the EU statistics agency.

Britain never adopted the Euro and relies on its own currency, the pound. But the British government, which like its Greek counterpart has cut public sector jobs and spending to trim a huge budget deficit, attributed the poor employment numbers in part to the Euro crisis, which has depressed demand for British products in European markets and caused British companies to hesitate to hire.

“These figures show just how much our economy is being affected by the crisis in the Eurozone,” the employment minister, Chris Grayling, said last week. “Our European partners must take urgent action to stabilise the position.”

The opposition Labour party has warned that the coalition government headed by prime minister, David Cameron needs to stop blaming the Eurozone for Britain’s economic problems and slow down its aggressive spending cuts, which are “hurting but not working.”

Even the Confederation of British Industry, an employers’ group that generally aligns with the economic policies of Cameron’s Conservative party, has called for urgent action by the government to put Britons, especially young people, to work.

“A generation risks being scarred by the devastating effects of long-term unemployment,” John Cridland, the group’s director-general, said last week.

Rising unemployment among the young is especially worrying because it can easily lead to long-term unemployment and make it harder for the next generation to find its way into the workforce, economists and charity workers said. That would not only hurt economic growth but could also affect youth crime rates, research shows.

A 1 percentage point reduction in youth unemployment could have saved 2 million pounds ($3.1 million) in one year, 2004, by averting youth crime, according to research by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The centre also estimated that youth unemployment cost the British government about 20 million pounds a week in benefits paid.

“If people are brought up in a household where people aren’t working, they miss the role models and are less likely to work themselves,” said Tom Jackson, chief executive of Spear, a charity that helps train unemployed youth.

Memories of recent riots in London that spread to other parts of the country make many people here fearful that disappointment with the government’s austerity policies could quickly set off social unrest.

Public opposition against the spending cuts — and those seemingly spared by them, like employees in London’s large financial services sector — has been mounting, as seen in the number of Occupy the London Stock Exchange protesters in tents outside St. Paul’s Cathedral. British unions have warned of general strikes.

Abdi Hussein, 24, said he was “fed up” with a government that promised to look after the young and unemployed but failed to do so. “We need the government to say, ‘We’ll give you at least a part-time job if you’ve been unemployed for, say, six months,”’ he said.

Hussein has been looking for a job ever since he had to drop out of a university programme in photography last year because he ran out of money. He now lives on unemployment benefits and regularly searches for jobs and sends applications. “I tried everything, but people always chose candidates with more experience,” he said. “They say, ‘Sorry, we received 400 applications for one position.”’

Some youth workers and businesses are sceptical. Howard de Souza, director of TAG, a youth charity, said the government plans would help those who were most likely to get a job anyway but neglected the less skilled who were without experience.

John Walker, chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, called the youth unemployment figures “truly shocking” and said “the government must wake up and take action to turn this around.”

The government has said it is relying on the private sector to provide jobs for young Britons and on voluntary organisations to train them, a policy that draws criticism from some quarters.

“We can’t expect the private sector to take up the slack with demand being so weak both at home and abroad, so it will be a long time before the labour market starts improving,” said Nida Ali, an economist at the ITEM Club research group at Ernst & Young.

Igglesden decided he could not wait.

In September, he signed up for a 12-week personal development programme with the Prince’s Trust, a charity for young people founded by the Prince of Wales. So far he has acquired interview skills, learned how to prepare a resume and even acquired some work experience, he said.

Igglesden recently finished a short stint with Homebase, a chain of home improvement stores, and said he hoped to apply for a permanent role there once his programme finished.

“I feel more hopeful now,” he said. “Things don’t look so bleak anymore.”