600 million new jobs needed to address youth employment crisis, says report
The jobs outlook for young people worldwide is bleak, and urgent action is required to stop the situation getting worse, according to a report from a new organization backed by the World Bank.
According to the Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) report, a third of the world’s 1.8 billion 15-to-29-year-olds are not currently in employment, education, or training, making them twice as likely to be unemployed. And of the one billion young people who will enter the jobs market in the next decade, only 40% will be able to get a job that currently exists.
To prevent the situation getting worse, 600 million new jobs will need to be created in the next ten years, warns S4YE.
S4YE’s Matt Hobson commented that: “Young people account for 40 percent of the world’s population—the largest youth generation in human history—but they are disproportionately affected by unemployment […] We need to act now, and we need to act together if we are going to realize the significant opportunities presented by this many young people today.”
Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) is a coalition of stakeholders including the World Bank, the ILO, RAND, Plan International, and others.
Jochen Kluve has written for IZA World of Labor about youth labor market interventions. He writes that: “The key to a successful youth intervention program is comprehensiveness, comprising multiple targeted components, including job-search assistance, counseling, training, and placement services. Such programs can be expensive, however, which underscores the need to focus on education policy and earlier interventions in the education system.”
Read more on this story at Bloomberg. The S4YE report can be downloaded here.
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