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Building upon the work initiated in 1996-97 under the Action Program on Youth Unemployment, and in response to the resolution on Youth Employment adopted by the International Labour Conference at its 86th Session (June 1998), the ILO Development Policies Department launched a number of studies on the effectiveness of strategies and programs implemented in different countries of the world to cope with youth marginalization and unemployment.
Our challenge has been to identify practical and effective strategies to eradicate youth unemployment. While much has been learnt, we must admit that more has yet to be discovered. As the present employment situation throughout the world shows, only few countries have managed to generate decent employment for their youth, let alone their adult population. We are still searching for practicable solutions to this global problem. One thing is clear: sustainable, job-enhancing economic growth remains an indispensable component of any strategy to eradicate youth unemployment. Experience has shown that employment-friendly growth is essential, and targeted programs can only provide complementary resources and cross-gap actions. Starting from this premise, the present paper examines the effects of policies and programs on employment, and suggests some viable strategies for the inclusion of youth in the process of development.
The debate about education versus training needs to be revived. In an increasingly mobile world, the need to acquire the ability to learn is, often, more important than the acquisition of a specific skill. There is, however some evidence to indicate that effective apprenticeship systems ease the transition from education to work. Those systems must rely on the growth of enterprises in the formal sector. Investment in better, earlier and longer education might be more effective in promoting the attitudes and competencies required for the world of work. It is questionable that large untargeted youth employment or training programs have positive rates of return. There is little evidence that such programs improve either the employment prospects or earnings for the young and especially so for the disadvantaged among them. Narrowly targeted and carefully evaluated programs can, however, ease the plight of specific youth categories. The effective use of public resources can only be achieved if there are ways to measure the short-, medium- and long-term outcomes of...specific strategies. It is strongly argued that detailed evaluations must be conducted as a pre-requisite for the design of any job-creating strategy for the young.
Over 70 million young people are unemployed throughout the world according to ILO estimates. In countries as diverse as Colombia, Egypt, Italy and Jamaica, more than one in three young persons are classified as "unemployed" - declaring themselves to be without work, to be searching for work and/or to be available for work. The most seriously affected regions are Southern Europe (Greece, Italy and Spain), Eastern Europe (particularly Bulgaria, Latvia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Poland) and the Caribbean (including Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago). However, youth unemployment is not high in all countries. In Austria, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea and the United Republic of Tanzania, less than one in 12 young workers are unemployed and the difference between youth and adult rates is relatively low. (Country data relate to 1997 or earlier.)
In most countries, teenagers experience higher unemployment rates than those in their early twenties. However, the difference is small in such countries as India and Indonesia and only moderate in most developed countries. In France and Germany, where the unemployment rate for teenagers is less than for young adults, mass labour market programs and apprenticeships that target teenagers have reduced their rate of unemployment. Unemployment is but one dimension of the employment problem faced by young people. A disproportionately large number of the young in many countries are underemployed, some working fewer hours than they would like to and others working very long hours with little gain. Some young people may be able to obtain only part-time work, for example, in France (particularly young women) and Indonesia; or seasonal work as happens in the agriculturally based economies of south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Underemployment is also high among many young people who work in household production units in the rural and urban informal sectors. In poorer countries, where public or family sources provide little income support, jobless young people are often denied the "luxury" of remaining unemployed. They eke out a living by means of low productivity work in the lower, subsistence-oriented, reaches of the informal sector or in such low yield activities as odd jobs, hawking and car washing. Here the problem may not be short hours but excessively long hours with little reward. The widespread stagnation and decline of employment opportunities in the formal sectors of most developing countries has intensified the problem in recent years, with young women bearing a disproportionate burden.
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