With queues for jobs getting longer and longer across the world, the younger generation is at grave risk in the years to come, says a new ILO report.

The report, Global Unemployment Trends 2007-13, released in Geneva on Wednesday, projects that an estimated 73.4 million young people — 12.6 per cent — will be out of work in 2013. This is close to the levels reached at the peak of the economic crisis in 2009. The situation is particularly grim in the European Union, West Asia and North Africa.

The report said in developing countries such as India and China, which have 90 per cent of world’s younger population, about 60 per cent were neither had without work, nor were studying or engaged in irregular employment. “In other words, nearly two-thirds of youth in developing economies are not achieving their full economic potential,” it said, adding that most of the youth were turning to informal jobs where social protection was weak.

“Increasing numbers of youth are now turning to available part-time jobs or find themselves stuck in temporary employment. Secure jobs, which were once the norm for previous generations — at least in the advanced economies — have become less easily accessible for today’s youth,” says the report.

Noting that ‘stable and quality employment’ was especially lacking in developing regions where poverty was a major issue, the report said, “In India there is evidence that youth unemployment rates are higher for families with incomes over the $1.25 poverty rate than for those with incomes under this poverty line.”

Flagging the problem of ‘skills mismatch’, it says, “in developing countries such as India, as much as two-thirds of young workers receive below average wages and are engaged in work for which they are either over-qualified or under-qualified”.

“Over-education and over-skilling co-exist with under-education and under-skilling…Such a mismatch makes solutions to the youth employment crisis more difficult to find,” says the report.

The report calls for focus on policies on growth, massive improvements in education and training systems, and targeted youth employment actions.

>aditi.n@thehindu.co.in

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