GENEVA – The International Labour Organization (ILO) launched its Global Employment Trends for Youth 2015 report on 8 October.

The report provides the latest global and regional figures on youth employment, as well as the quality of employment in both developed and developing countries.

Main findings

This is a dense report, packed with data and information. The following summary aims at assisting readers to grasp the main findings and updates in youth labour market trends as well as the key issues for a continued policy focus on investments to promote youth employment.

Global youth labour market trends

. The global youth labour force and labour force participation rate continues to decline as enrolment in education increases. Between 1991 and 2014, the share of active youth (either employed or unemployed) in the youth population declined by 11.6 percentage points (from 59.0 to 47.3 per cent) compared to a 1 percentage point decline in the adult labour force participation rate.
.The global youth employment-to-population ratio (EPR) – the share of the working-age population that is employed – declined by 2.7 percentage points
between 2007 and 2014 (from 43.9 to 41.2 per cent). The declining trends in
youth EPRs are closely linked to increasing trends in educational enrolment.
.After a period of rapid increase between 2007 and 2010, the global youth unemployment rate settled at 13.0 per cent for the period 2012 to 2014 and is
expected to increase only slightly to 13.1 per cent in 2015. The rate has not yet
recovered its pre-crisis rate of 11.7 per cent in 2007.
. The number of unemployed youth has declined from 76.6 million at the peak of the crisis in 2009 to an estimated 73.3 million in 2014.
. Globally, the ratio of youth to adult unemployment rates has hardly changed over time and stood at 2.9 in 2014. The youth unemployment rate has been
consistently close to three times that of the adult unemployment rate since 1995
(with ratios between 2.7 and 2.9).

Regional trends in youth unemployment, labour market participation and inactivity

.In 2014, youth unemployment was highest in the Middle East and North Africa, at 28.2 per cent and 30.5 per cent, respectively, and lowest in South Asia (9.9 per cent) and East Asia (10.6 per cent).
. The youth unemployment situation in the Developed Economies and European
Union, the region most drastically impacted during the crisis period, started to ease as of 2012. The youth unemployment rate decreased between 2012 and
2014 from 18.0 to 16.6 per cent and is expected to continue its downward trend to a projected 15.1 per cent in 2020.
.But recovery has yet to come to many European countries. The youth unemployment rate exceeded 20 per cent in two-thirds of the European
countries in 2014.
. The youth unemployment rate decreased between 2012 and 2014 in: Central and South-Eastern Europe (non-EU) and CIS (17.4 to 17.2 per cent), Latin
America and the Caribbean (13.5 to 13.4 per cent) and sub-Saharan Africa (12.1
to 11.6 per cent). Rates increased over the period in East Asia (10.1 to 10.6 per cent), the Middle East (27.6 to 28.2 per cent), North Africa (29.7 to 30.5 per cent)

and South-East Asia and the Pacific (12.7 to 13.6 per cent). There was no change in rates in South Asia.
. Gender differentials in youth unemployment rates are small at the global level and in most regions. In the Middle East and North Africa, however, the
unemployment rate of young women exceeds that of young men by as much as
22 and 20 percentage points, respectively.
. The aggregate youth unemployment rate of high-income countries in 2014 was
6.5 percentage points higher than that of low-income countries (16.1 and 9.6 per cent, respectively). But the youth unemployment rate nearly doubles in the low- income grouping when the relaxed definition of unemployment is applied.8
.The youth unemployment rate increases consistently with the level of education attained in Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa and sub-
Saharan Africa. Youth who completed their tertiary education in the three
regions were between two to three times more likely to be unemployed than the youth with primary education or less. In the higher-income regions, it is the youth with lower education who face the most significant challenge in finding work.
.The share of youth population neither in employment nor in education or training (NEET rates) peaked in 2010 in the wake of the Great Recession in most
developed economies (2012 for the European Union). Shares of young NEETs in the European Union (EU-28) have started to decline from the peak of 13.1 per cent in 2012 to 12.4 per cent in 2014.
.In the European Union (28 countries), more than one in three (35.5 per cent)
unemployed youth had been looking for work for longer than one year in 2014, an increase from 32.6 per cent in 2012.
. Long-term unemployment is also a concern among lower-income countries, but only among the few youth who can afford to be unemployed. The incidence of
long-term unemployment among youth in sub-Saharan Africa was 48.1 per cent,
behind only the share in the Middle East and North Africa (60.6 per cent). Viewed by income level, there is a slightly higher incidence of long-term unemployment in low-income compared to upper middle-income countries (43.4 and 40.9 per cent, respectively).

Regional trends in youth employment

.In 2014, the shares of employed youth in the population (youth employment-to- population ratio) ranged from 22.5 per cent in the Middle East to 49.2 per cent in East Asia. The ratio declined in all regions except sub-Saharan Africa between
2007 and 2014.
. One-fifth (20.7 per cent) of employed youth in OECD countries worked less than
30 hours per week (part-time) in 2000 compared to 30.1 per cent in 2013. Shares of youth in involuntary part-time work increased from 12.2 per cent in
2007 to 17.1 per cent in 2010 before falling back to 14.8 per cent in 2013.
.The majority of European countries are also witnessing an increasing trend in temporary work among youth. The EU-28 average showed a slight increase from
40.0 per cent in 2005 to 43.3 per cent in 2014.

8 Unemployed defined as persons without work and available to work rather than without work, available and actively seeking work (see section 3.3).

.Part-time work in low-income countries can be interpreted primarily in the irregularity of hours of the most vulnerable young workers (own-account and contributing family workers) as well as casual paid labourers. While 23.6 per cent of young paid employees in low-income countries worked part-time (similar to the 20.7 per cent share in OECD countries), the share of part-time workers among own-account workers was 35.9 per cent.
. In 2013, more than one-third (37.8 per cent) of employed youth in the developing world were poor (17.7 per cent in extreme poverty and 20.1 per cent
in moderate poverty).
. In 2013, as many as 169 million youth were working but living on less than US$2 per day. The number increases to 286 million if the near poor are included, thus
measuring working poverty below US$4 per day.
. In most low-income countries, two in three (66.3 per cent) young workers were in vulnerable employment as either own-account workers or contributing
(unpaid) family workers. Another 4.3 per cent were in casual paid labour and 2.1 per cent in temporary (non-casual) labour, for a total of 72.5 per cent in
“irregular employment”. This compares to an average of 34.5 per cent in irregular employment in seven upper middle-income countries and 41.2 per cent in eight lower middle-income countries.

Key policy implications and strategies for scaling up investment in youth employment

.Strategies to promote youth employment should articulate the mix and interaction of macroeconomic policies, labour and employment policies and other interventions specifically targeting young people, particularly the most disadvantaged.
. Policies that offer fiscal incentives, support the development of infrastructure and develop enabling regulations for enterprises operating in sectors with high
employment potential can help improve youth employment outcomes.
. The positive effect of public investment on youth employment can be maximized by ensuring that young workers have the right skills and are supported in the job
matching. In this sense, linking investment in infrastructure with labour market
policies would boost both quantity and quality of jobs for youth.
.Comprehensive packages of active labour market policies that target disadvantaged youth can help in the school-to-work transition.
. An increase in public investment, social benefits and active labour market policies (ALMPs) has an impact on youth employment, particularly in terms of
labour market participation. Evidence shows that public spending on labour
market policies is associated with significantly higher youth employment-to- population ratios.
.Specific policies and targeted interventions to support the transition of young workers to the formal economy yield better results if designed as part of
macroeconomic policies and include interventions to improve legal and administrative requirements for entrepreneurial activity, reforms to advance the quality of youth employment through access to rights at work, better working conditions and social protection.

.Coordinated responses and partnerships are required to scale up policies and strategies that have had an impact on the quantity and quality of jobs for young people.

See attachments.

The whole Report contains 110 pages. Inquiries can be made at the website: Website: www.ilo.org/caribbean