Even before the economic crisis hit, Southern Europe was not an easy place to forge a career. Low growth and a corrosive lack of meritocracy have long posed challenges to finding a job in Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal. Today, with the added sting of austerity, more people are left fighting over fewer opportunities. It is a zero-sum game that inevitably pits younger workers struggling to enter the labor market against older ones already occupying precious slots.

As a result, a deep malaise has set in among young people. Some take to the streets in protest; others emigrate to Northern Europe or beyond in an epic brain drain of college graduates. But many more suffer in silence, living in their childhood bedrooms well into adulthood because they cannot afford to move out.

�They call us the lost generation,� said Coral Herrera G�mez, 33, who has a Ph.D. in humanities but still lives with her parents in Madrid because she cannot find steady work. �I�m not young,� she added over coffee recently, �but I�m not an adult with a job, either.�

There has been a national debate for years in Spain about �mileuristas,� a nickname for college graduates whose best job prospects may well pay just 1,000 euros a month, or $1,300.