In emerging countries, the unemployment rate is predicted to rise from In Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, the unemployment rate is expected to increase from The poor quality of employment continues to disproportionately affect youth, albeit with considerable regional differences. For example, Sub- Saharan Africa continues to suffer the highest youth working poverty rates globally, at almost 70 per cent. Working poverty rates among young people are also elevated in Arab States 39 per cent and Southern Asia 49 per cent.
In developed economies, there is growing evidence of a shift in the age distribution of poverty, with youth taking the place of the elderly as the group at highest risk of poverty defined for developed economies as earning less than 60 per cent of the median income.
For instance, in , the share of young workers in the EU categorized as being at a high risk of poverty was The challenge is particularly acute in some countries where the at-risk-of-poverty for young workers exceeds 20 per cent.
Especially across North Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe, a lost generation of m young people fails to connect with or gain from global growth. There are currently about 75 million young people looking for a job around the world. Irrespective of location, young people, especially young women, will be disproportionately affected; unemployment is expected to be around three times higher for them than for their older counterparts and will reach m by In some regions, this proportion is already as high as five times the adult rate.
Globally, young people are nearly one in four of the working poor, stuck in low quality jobs with no hope of progression. For many, the transition from education to a full-time job does not run smoothly: they lack the necessary skills, there are no available jobs in their area, they find it difficult to move house to find work.
Neither does higher education necessarily guarantee a decent job. In the Middle East and North Africa highly educated young women are particularly disadvantaged. In Turkey, the unemployment rate among university educated women is more than 3 times higher than that of university educated men; in Iran and the United Arab Emirates, the figure is the same; and in Saudi Arabia, it is 8 times. Aside from being unable to contribute to the economy, unemployment can rob anyone of the capacity to enjoy mental and physical well-being; at its worst it can lead to social and political instability, constrained productivity and poor economic growth.
Its effects can last for years, and potentially create a generation who have lost all expectation of a full and productive life. New technologies are changing the nature of work across every sector, from agriculture to industry to services, while new skills are needed for even the most traditional of roles. A generation ago manufacturing jobs required manual ability, and perhaps basic literacy, but now require technical capabilities.
Worse, increased automation and artificial intelligence means that both unskilled and skilled jobs are decreasing at the same time as the number of people seeking work is increasing. Such is the extent of the problem that, to make up for jobs lost during the economic crisis, and to provide productive opportunities for those in or entering the labour market, including young people, the ILO estimates that million jobs will have to be created globally over the next decade.
Where they are will matter; the inability to move to where the jobs are can limit employment opportunity. In the West this may be in part due to attachment to home but rules around social housing and poor transport links also play their part. In Europe, only 2. Language barriers, cultural differences and non-transferable qualifications make it much harder for Europeans but public policy also shapes behaviour, as most euro-area countries support their unemployed for more than a year.
In most American states, jobless workers qualify for only 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. Those who begin their careers without work are more likely to have lower wages and suffer unemployment again later in life partially because they have missed out on training and experience but also because young workers typically changes jobs and increase their salaries at a much higher rate than those who are older.
While much academic literature maintains that expansionary efforts to boost growth rates will inevitably founder on the rocks of inflation or supply-side constraints, the ILO report insists that a deficiency in demand could well be responsible for the prolonged period of slow growth in the world economy and that wage inflation can be held in check if industrial practices and labour-market regulations are designed to do so.
If countries are to begin creating jobs and reversing wage inequality, it is necessary to increase economic growth rates while strengthening institutional mechanisms for moderating wage inflation and improving the design and implementation of labour-market policies, paying particular to the long-term unemployed, says the ILO report.
The report says that "higher growth is possible provided a sustained period of expansionary policies is supported by credible policies to prevent a resurgence of inflationary wage increases and to overcome the skill shortages that will be generated. Mechanisms for moderating wage inflation are the second prerequisite if the expansionary impulse is to avoid being choked off by the reaction of financial markets.
The report acknowledges that while no easy solutions exist, several options are worth exploring, including "strengthening of the coordination of wage bargaining through the synchronization of bargaining periods and the provision of consensus forecasts of future economic possibilities.
The third requirement for reversing the rise in unemployment is "to improve the design and implementation of labour-market policies. Subsidies and payroll tax measures designed to promote the reintegration of long-term unemployed may prove useful, but should be examined carefully because of the possible side effects.
Additional measures include "the correction of market failures which result from the underprovision of training" as well as "training programmes targeted on the most disadvantaged groups in the labour market.
The report maintains that the most often-cited solution for problems linked to high unemployment, further labour market deregulation, is not supported by empirical evidence.
While recognizing that there may well be aspects of labour-market regulations that need reforming in different countries, the report argues that "there is no basis for a blanket presumption that these regulations are invariably sources of rigidity and that deregulation is automatically the optimal solution.
The unemployment problem in transition economies results from "the legacy of labour hoarding in state-owned enterprises carried over from the previous economic system.
Given the high and potentially intolerable social tensions this is likely to generate, ILO underscores the importance for these countries of choosing "economic policies and labour-market institutions that are most likely to reduce unemployment. Other practical problems include inadequate housing market flexibility and the difficulty of ensuring adequate social protection for workers affected by restructuring.
An array of measures, including an improved institutional framework in which unions and employers' organizations can undertake effective collective bargaining may need to be supplemented by temporary measures to contain the rise in unemployment.
The majority of workers in developing countries "are engaged in low-productivity work that is often physically onerous but yet yields only meagre earnings. The report attributes the deteriorating employment conditions in many parts of the developing world other than in the dynamic Asian economies to "the failure to recover fully from the economic crisis of the early s.
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