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2.2 Wasting opportunities: Working Out of Poverty

Written by: International Labour Organization

Article Overview: Youth unemployment

2.2 Wasting opportunities: Working Out of Poverty

The transition from school to work, from childhood to adult life, can determine
a person’s chances of escaping poverty. About 100 million young people enter the global workforce every year, mainly in developing countries.
With more than 1 billion of the world’s population today between 15
and 25 years of age, this trend is set to continue through to 2015 and beyond.
If, as they reach adulthood and themselves become parents, they are able to
find decent and productive employment, a huge step can be made towards
reducing and eliminating extreme poverty.

Current trends are not encouraging. In most developing countries,
young women and men face the choice of informal work or no work. The
ILO estimates that around 74 million young women and men are unemployed
throughout the world, accounting for 41 per cent of all the 180 million
unemployed persons globally,and many more young people are working
long hours for low pay, struggling to eke out a living in the informal economy.
An estimated 59 million young people between 15 and 17 years of age
are engaged in hazardous work.

Young people actively seeking to participate
in the world of work are two to three times more likely than older
generations to find themselves unemployed. In many countries, young
women are more likely to be unable to find work than young men.
Those
with less than 12 years’ schooling and a low level of educational attainment
are also particularly disadvantaged.

Young workers, especially those seeking their first job, are acutely affected
by the overall state of demand for labour. When the business cycle
turns down, employers first stop hiring, then lay off those most recently
taken on. Youth unemployment is about 30 per cent in Panama, Uruguay
and Venezuela and about 40 per cent in Argentina and Colombia. The worst
affected are the poor. In 1997, before the onset of the current crisis, open
youth unemployment in Argentina from poor urban households was 55 per
cent, compared with a national average for all young people of 24 per cent.

With seven out of ten new jobs in Latin America created in the informal
economy over the decade of the 1990s, income earned by young people aged
20 to 24 is half that of adults and, for those under 19, only 30 per cent. In
Africa, where up to 55 per cent of the population is under 18 years old in
some countries, youth unemployment is 56 per cent in South Africa and between
30 and 40 per cent in Algeria, Egypt and Morocco. In Asia and the
Pacific, the ILO estimates that about 30 per cent of the region’s 650 million
young people are not in regular work.

The cost of youth unemployment to economic and social development
is extremely high. It perpetuates the inter-generational cycle of poverty and
is associated with high levels of crime, violence, substance abuse and the rise
of political extremism. In some countries virtually the only paid occupation
open to many young men is to join the various armed groups involved in civil
conflict. For young women, the dangers of entrapment in the sex industry are
widespread.

Yet the current generation of young workers are the most educated in
human history. Their expectations are high, fuelled by the images spread by
the international entertainment industry. In September 2000, the Millennium
Summit resolved to “develop and implement strategies that give young people everywhere a real chance to find decent and productive work”.
This is a pledge that the world cannot afford not to honour.

Related Articles
  1.5 Skills development for sustainable livelihoods: Working Out of Poverty
  2.9 Conclusions: Working Out of Poverty
  1.15 Building an employment agenda: Working Out of Poverty
  1.19 Building trust: Working Out of Poverty
  1.0 Overview: Working Out of Poverty

Article Tags: 100 million, 17 years, adult life, adulthood, business cycle, current trends, developing countries, extreme poverty, first job, global workforce, hazardous work, ilo, informal economy, level of educational attainment, productive employment, transition from school, unemployed persons, urban households, women and men, youth unemployment



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