Abstract
Youth employment has been a challenge with gradual acceleration from beginning of 1990s. It also has been exacerbated by latest global crises. Besides, as a fact mutually having a fostering relation with it, increasing rate of inactive population among the youth has caused to soar worry about the matter. Although youth unemployment is a common problem for developed and developing countries, it differs in these countries in terms of formation, intensity and solution way. In two decades countries around the world have implemented particular policies against the matter accordance to action plans prescribed by international organizations such as ILO, OECD and EU. Even though, there has been some partial improvements as a result of economic and labour market policies, there is a long way to solve the problem significantly and to decrease the anxiety down to reasonable level. Therefore, the countries must continuously monitor and analyze their conditions and create integrated policies suited to socio-economic conjuncture.
TopRecent Developments In Youth Employment
Today generation of youth has been the largest size in human history, with 1.2 billion aged 15-24 years and with 1.8 billion including 25-29 ages, approximately 85-90% of them in developing countries (WB, 2015, 31; UN, 2015, 1; ILO, 2013, 1) and its nearly 500 million around the world were unemployed, underemployed, or engaged in insecure employment in 2014 (WB, 2015, 44).
After global youth unemployment rate steadily increased between 1992 and 2002 from 11,1% to 13,2%, it had a recovery term till onset of economic crises in 2007 by reaching rate of 11,6% (ILO, 2011, 2; ILO, 2013, 8). After the period of rapid increase between 2007 and 2010, the global youth unemployment rate settled at 13.0% for the period 2012 to 2014 and is expected to increase only to 13.1% in 2015, remaining still above its precrisis rate in 2007 (ILO, 2015b, 16).
Between 1991 and 2014, while the overall youth population grew by 185 million, the number of the youth labour force has declined by 29.9 million resulting youth labour force participation rate declined from 59.0 to 47.3% (ILO, 2015b, 3) due to some reasons such as increased school attendance, the tendency of remaining in the education system for a longer period, high overall unemployment rates, and giving up hope of finding work and dropping out of the labour market (DESA, 2005, 16).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Labour Market Information System: An information mechanism that collects and evaluates any information about facts of demand and supply sides, opportunities and functioning problems in labour markets.
Neet Rate: Rate of those not in employment, education or training and not seeking a job among the working age population.
Underemployment: An employment situation which is below capacity of worker in terms of skill, working time and wage.
Labour Market Transition: Duration or process of that a young person (aged 15-29) passes from the end of schooling (or entry to first economic activity) to the first decent job.
Vulnerable Employment: Type of working that is mostly insecure and vulnerable to fluctuations in the business cycles as own-account worker without employees and unpaid family workers
Scarring Effect: Effects of youth unemployment over working life as more spells of unemployment, lower earnings prospects and lower chances of obtaining a decent job in the longer term.
Skills Mismatch: A labour market fact in which skills of existing labour supply are not well-matched with available jobs or demanded skills by employee due to being under-skilled or over-skilled.
Human Capital: An individual’s skill set that consists of intellectual and crafting abilities creating economic value added.
Non-Standard Employment: Working with temporary contracts or part time schedule instead of full-time and permanent contracts.