Youth unemployment 'skyrockets to all-time high', says UN

Youth unemployment worldwide has skyrocketed to an all-time high, the UN has warned today.

Young people aged 15 to 24 represent 47% of the total 186 million people out of work worldwide in 2003 – while only making up a quarter of the working age population.

According to the International Labour Organization's (ILO) 'Global Employment Trends for Youth 2004' report, the problem is more pronounced in developing countries, where young people make up a much higher proportion of the labour force than in industrialized economies. Eighty-five per cent of the world’s youth live in developing countries where they are 3.8 times more likely to be unemployed than adults, as compared with 2.3 times in industrialized economies, the report found.

The report said that young people also represent 130 million of the world’s 550 million working poor who are unable to lift themselves and their families above the equivalent of the $1 per day poverty line. These young people struggle to survive, often performing work under unsatisfactory conditions in the informal economy, the ILO study said.

“We are wasting an important part of the energy and talent of the most educated youth generation the world has ever had,” ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said.

“Enlarging the chances of young people to find and keep decent work is absolutely critical to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals.”

The UN Millennium summit of 2000 call for a set of specific targets by 2015, including halving extreme poverty and hunger and slashing child and maternal mortality rates.

Halving the world youth unemployment rate would add at least $2.2 trillion to global gross domestic product (GDP) equal to around 4% of the 2003 value, according to a new ILO analysis.

The report puts global youth unemployment at 14.4% in 2003, a 26.8% increase over the past decade, with rates highest in the Middle East and North Africa (at 25.6%).

(gmcg)