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5. On the basis of present knowledge about the policies adopted and experiences evaluated, it is concluded that:
a. Economic strategies that boost aggregate demand must be adopted;
b. Carefully targeted dual apprenticeship - education systems should be implemented;
c. These systems will be successful if the formal sector in the economy grows, and if active tripartite participation in these schemes is achieved; and
d. Self-employment and small enterprises in the formal sector backed up with financial services and training, are promoted within carefully targeted population groups.
2.0 Who are the youth?
According to the standard UN definition, youth comprises the age-group between fifteen and twenty-four inclusive. In practice, the operational definition of youth varies widely from country to country depending on cultural, institutional and political factors. In industrialized countries, the lower age limit usually corresponds to the statutory minimum school-leaving age, whilst the upper limit tends to vary more widely. In Britain, for example, "Youth Employment Policy" generally refers to policies targeted at the 16-18 year old age group whilst in Italy the term is used to describe policies for people aged between 14-29 in Northern Italy and 14-32 in the South. For the purposes of this paper the UN definition is used. Within the category of youth, it is also important to make a further distinction between teenagers and young adults, since the problems faced by these two groups are quite distinct.
3.0 What is unemployment?
Although it may appear obvious, it is important to begin by discussing briefly what we mean by unemployment. According to the ILO definition, which is now the most widely used definition, at least as regards the reporting of unemployment statistics, the unemployed are defined as those people who have not worked more than one hour during the short reference period but who are available for and actively seeking work. Even with this fairly unequivocal definition, some cross-country differences may arise. For example, how are students treated? In most countries, students are treated as being outside the labour force, in others (e.g. Norway), if they are actively seeking work, they are included.
Furthermore, a number of normative questions arise concerning this definition. For example, is the one hour rule appropriate? Some national authorities would prefer to use a longer working period. Thus, the Netherlands have implemented a twelve-hour (per week) rule. That is, using this definition, a person is defined as unemployed if they have worked less than twelve hours in the reference week.
Another issue regards the treatment of those traditionally defined as outside the labour force. One might question the exclusion from the unemployed of discouraged workers; people who wish to work but are not actively seeking a job since they see no possibility of obtaining gainful employment. Their position "outside the labour force" is purely a question of prevailing economic conditions. If and when the chances of finding work improve, at least some of these people will return to employment without ever having been defined as unemployed. I would thus argue that non-employment is possibly a more useful concept than unemployment. That is,…
the ratio of those neither in education or employment to the population (either including or excluding those in education). However, such a statistic is not widely reported and is, at least at present, impracticable.
To provide an example of the importance of these distinctions, table 1 presents information on the non-employed/population ratio and the non-employment rate of male eighteen year-olds and the male unemployment rates of the 15-19 year old age group. Even though the last rate is not strictly comparable to the other two since the age group used is wider, the differences in the rankings of countries for the three different indices are quite striking. The UK varies in position from seventh to fourteenth according to which index is employed. Similarly France varies from sixth position to eleventh using the different indices. None of the countries in the table maintain the same ranking throughout and the rank correlation coefficients between the unemployment rate and the non-employment ratio.
Table 1
Non-employment/population ration and non-employment rate for 18 years old and unemployment rates for 15-19 years old males, 1994
Non-employment Population ratio 18-years old1 Non-employment rate 18 years old2 Unemployment rate 15-19 years old
Country Ratio Ranking Rate Ranking Rate Ranking
Europe Belgium 13.0 9 59.9 14 9.5 2
Denmark 4.4 1 12.4 1 9.9 3
France 10.7 6 53.1 13 21.9 11
Germany 7.8 4 14.2 2 6.2 1
Greece 10.8 7 35.0 8 12.8 5
Ireland 16.8 11 41.3 9 31.8 12
Italy 15.2 10 45.5 11 33.0 13
Netherlands 5.3 2 21.0 4 12.1 4
Portugal 7.2 3 17.9 3 15.53 6
Spain 17.2 12 48.2 12 39.8 14
United 23.5 14 34.4 7 21.1 10
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