Global Employment Trends for Youth 2015: Scaling up investments in decent jobs for youth
‎ILO
08 October 2015 :: 98 pages :: 978-92-2-129635-5[ISBN]
Pdf: http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—dcomm/—publ/documents/publication/wcms_412015.pdf
Overview
The Global Employment Trends for Youth 2015 provides an update on key youth labour market indicators and trends, focusing both on the continuing labour market instability and on structural issues in youth labour markets. The report offers valuable lessons learned on “what works” for youth employment and on emerging practices in policy responses. Ideally, these will shape future investments in youth employment, as countries continue to prioritize youth in their national policy agendas.

.

Press Release
Youth employment crisis easing but far from over
Despite a mild recovery in the 2012-2014 period, the youth unemployment rate remains well above its pre-crisis level. For millions of young people around the world finding a decent job is still a drawn-out uphill struggle.

GENEVA (ILO News) – The global youth unemployment rate has stabilized at 13 per cent following a period of rapid increase between 2007 and 2010 but it is still well above the pre-crisis level of 11.7 per cent, according to the ILO’s Global Employment Trends for Youth 2015 report released today.

The report highlights a drop in the number of unemployed youth to 73.3 million in 2014. That is 3.3 million less than the crisis peak of 76.6 million in 2009.

Compared to 2012, the youth unemployment rate has decreased by 1.4 percentage points in Developed Economies and the European Union and by half a percentage point or less in Central and South-Eastern Europe (non-EU) and CIS, Latin America and the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa. The remaining regions – East Asia, South-East Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa – saw an increase in the youth unemployment rate between 2012 and 2014, or no change in the case of South Asia…

…The report offers new evidence on how young people move into the labour market based on data from recent school-to-work transition surveys (SWTS)* . For young people who aspire to a stable job, the transition period takes an average of 19 months. A young person with university education is able to move to a stable job in one-third of the time needed for a youth with primary education. In most cases the transition takes longer for young women than men.
Time to scale up action: Investing in skills and in quality job creation
Rapid changes in technology, in patterns of work and employment relationship, as well as new forms of start-ups, require constant adjustment to new labour market conditions and addressing skills mismatches.

Providing youth the best opportunity to transition to a decent job calls for investing in education and training of the highest possible quality, providing youth with skills that match labour market demands, giving them access to social protection and basic services regardless of their contract type, as well as levelling the playing field so that all aspiring youth can attain productive employment regardless of their gender, income level or socio-economic background.

“We know that today’s youth do not face an easy labour market transition and with the continued global economic slowdown, this is likely to continue, but we also know that greater investment in targeted action to boost youth employment pays off. It is time to scale up action in support of youth employment,” says Azita Berar Awad, Director of the ILO’s Employment Policy Department…