Brussels, 22/05/2012 (Agence Europe) - Youth unemployment worldwide in 2012 remains stuck at its highest crisis level and is not expected to fall until 2016 at the earliest, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO) in its 2012 report on global youth employment trends, published on Tuesday, 22 May. In the developed economies the situation is even worse than the 18% youth unemployment rate predicted for this year, due to a massive fall in the numbers of workers employed, explains the ILO. The organisation points out that in the European Union temporary work and part-time jobs, for example, have increased more quickly among young people than among adults.
Forecasts suggest that 12.7% of young workers in the world will be unemployed this year. This rate is identical to the rate during the peak of the crisis in 2009 and slightly higher than last year when unemployment stood at 12.6% among young people, explains the report. The rate would be even higher if those who are often discouraged by a lack of prospects were taken into account and who then give up or postpone their search for a job. If the rate were subsequently adjusted, youth unemployment in the world would have been 13.6% in 2011.
On the global level, there will be almost 75 million people aged between 15 and 24 unemployed this year. This constitutes an increase of almost 4 million since 2007. Large increases have been experienced in particular by the developed economies and European Union, Central and South-eastern Europe (non-EU), the CIS, Latin America, the Caribbean and South Asia. In the developed economies and EU, as well as in South Asia, little progress has been made in rolling back the impact of the global economic crisis. In North Africa, the youth unemployment rate has increased sharply following the Arab Spring, rising by almost 5 percentage points between 2010 and 2011 and adding to an already very high level of youth unemployment in this region as well as the Middle East.
Although (large) differences in regional youth unemployment rates remain, all regions face major youth employment challenges. Even in East Asia, the youth unemployment rate in 2011 was 2.8 times higher than the adult rate. Apart from the immediate negative economic and social effects of high youth unemployment, it is important to consider its detrimental effects on future employability and wages.
ILO Executive Director, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, stated: “The youth unemployment crisis can be beaten but only if job creation for young people becomes a key priority in policy-making and private sector investment picks up significantly.” He added: “This includes measures such as offering tax and other incentives to enterprises who hire young people, efforts to reduce the skills mismatch among youth, entrepreneurship programmes that integrate skills training, mentoring and access to capital, and the improvement of social protection for the young.” (LC/transl.fl)