News

11 years needed for youth unemployment pre-recession levels

The International Labour Organization (ILO) has recently launched a flagship report that attempts to deal with issues surrounding job recovery in times of constrained public finances, the global social climate, rebalancing global growth and reforming finance for more and better jobs. Importantly, the report highlights that young men and women have been disproportionately affected since the onset of the crisis. Furthermore, examination of earlier experiences has shown that it takes, on average, over 11 years for youth unemployment to return to pre-recession levels.

The report underlines that young people are also disproportionately hit by unemployment in terms of the type of work they are forced to enter. Such work is often precarious by nature and does not fit their skills. Due to the labour market being so depressed for so long, the report narrates that many unemployed people are getting wholly discouraged and are leaving the labour market altogether. In the countries that such statistics were available, this led to more than four million jobseekers stopping looking for work altogether.

The European Youth Forum is deeply concerned with the ILO's bleak portrayal of the continuing difficulties it expects young people to face in the post crisis labour market. In reporting that the crisis not only affects young people's possibilities of finding a quality job, but also remaining in a labour market with decent working conditions, the ILO underlines that there is a worrying tendency that recruiters now prefer younger workers who are able to work long hours. The European Youth Forum therefore calls upon European states to safeguard young worker's rights to ensure that no person in the labour market is exploited, or discriminated against in their entry into the labour market on the basis of the amount of hours or situations they are willing to work within.

Useful Links:

The International Labour Organization - World of Work Report 2010 - From one crisis to the next?

The Huffington Post - 05/10/10 - World Leaders Must Address Global Youth Employment Crisis

The European Youth Forum - Position Paper on Youth Employment in Times of Crisis