@mrmanager@lemmy.today was talking about European companies doing fine despite strong unions in Europe and there being a lack of companies toppling over due to the strong unions.

They actually undersold it, because in many Western-European countries everyone benefits from union negotiations, even people that aren’t members of a union because the collective bargaining agreements unions manage to negotiate will affect everyone working in the relevant industry by virtue of laws deferring to those collective bargaining agreements.

You in turn decided to reframe the discussion at hand from companies doing well to unemployment numbers and not just general unemployment numbers, but youth unemployment numbers because you felt it would serve your argument best.

But if you look at the trends for unemployment then the story isn’t as bleak as you’d make it out to be. For starters general unemployment averages under 6% with only two countries being above 10% (and below 15%).
Average youth unemployment sits at 13.9% with a hand full over 20%.

However, both general and youth unemployment are on a steady downwards trend since 2013.
One exception to this trend for general unemployment is during the pandemic, where it shows a bump and for youth unemployment there's an additional minor bump in 2022, which suggests a correlation with the influx of refugees from Ukraine. This is the European source on these statistics.

There will always be a higher unemployment rate in the EU compared to the US, especially when it comes to youth unemployment.

This lies mainly in the fact that most European countries have a civil registry system that automatically keeps track of certain data, unemployment being one of them, whereas in the US this data is collected by the Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics by conducting a survey of roughly 60,000 households.
Another factor is a difference in definitions. A good example is the one from the website of the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Garrett is 16 years old, and he has no job from which he receives any pay or profit. However, Garrett does help with the regular chores around his parents’ farm and spends about 20 hours each week doing so.

Lisa spends most of her time taking care of her home and children, but she helps in her husband's computer software business all day Friday and Saturday.

Both Garrett and Lisa are considered employed.

Neither of them would be considered employed in most European countries. There are other such discrepancies, for example the US doesn't include people under 16, whereas Europe looks at 15-24 for youth unemployment.

And then there's the cultural difference between the two markets about when people are expected to start working and subsequently the jobs that will be available.

Which makes sense. Companies still need people, but if it’s more expensive to get low-end workers you just won’t hire entry level workers unless they’ve proven themselves beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Your hypothesis is quite lacking.
As stated, the trends have been going down for a decade now, if your hypothesis was true we'd see an upwards trend.
Additionally, these labor protections, including protections against being laid off, have been around for decades, your hypothesis doesn't offer an explanation why, despite these protections, unemployment is going down.
Also, minimum wage, as is often paid for these kinds of jobs, is lower in most EU countries than in many US states, making it comparably cheaper to hire those kind of jobs in Europe than it is in the US, your hypothesis doesn't explain why, despite this, the unemployment rate is higher in Europe than it is in the US.

In short, your hypothesis nor the unemployment rate is relevant to what @mrmanager@lemmy.today was positing, so lets refocus to the topic at hand: the lack of companies toppling over like domino bricks despite the copious amounts of employee protection facilitated by strong unions.

Perhaps afterwards, we can talk about the lack of landlords, corporate or otherwise, going bankrupt despite the strong tenant protections as well as the lack of companies selling merchandise to consumers pulling out of the market despite the strong consumer protections, and so and so forth.

And then, maybe, just maybe, we can afterwards all come to the conclusion that these QoL improvements are attainable without some kind of economic doom scenario.