In many countries, greater numbers of young people are leaving school and not doing work. What do you think are issues that youth unemployment creates for individuals and society? So how we can bring down our youth unemployment?
In many countries, greater numbers of young people are leaving school and not doing work. What do you think are issues that youth unemployment creates for individuals and society? So how we can bring down our youth unemployment?
The rise of youth unemployment is now perhaps one of the most acute socioeconomic problems of our time, with millions globally being trapped inside a vicious cycle between insufficient schooling and an increasingly closed-off labour market. This phenomenon, while individualistic in nature, has far-reaching ramifications that affect the very foundations of society and necessitate policy responses at a systemic level.
On the interpersonal level, youth unemployment creates a cycle of disadvantage that is profoundly damaging. With no income, youth cannot become financially independent and thus many rely on family support long past adolescence or in some cases are condemned to poverty. This increasing economic uncertainty creates severe mental health repercussions — studies regularly associate youth unemployment with spikes in anxiety, depression and low self-esteem. Deprivation of purpose, structure and identity—as work provides—is also harmful and accounts for the markedly poorer mental health and general life satisfaction among those out of work.
Moreover, long spells of unemployment when at a young age can cause what economists refer to as a “scarring effect” — that is, it can lead to an impairment of someone’s lifetime earnings capacity and job career. Because of employers’ scepticism about gaps in employment history, the longer a young person remains out of work, the more difficult re-entry into the labour market becomes. This can curtail the ability to climb up the social ladder for life, condemning people to a lifetime of low-paid, insecure work.
These are equally rooted and have deep systemic consequences on society. For any nation, a significant number of economically inactive young people is a substantial loss of productive potential. Tax revenues fall because less of the population is in a position to help contribute to public finances, while demands on social welfare systems also expand — an unsustainable fiscal squeeze that puts enormous pressure on government budgets. In societies where youth unemployment is ‘lumpenised’ and confined to certain communities or demographic groups, the economic marginalisation associated with under-employment can heighten social tensions, breed resentment, and in extreme cases even lead to climbing crime levels and civil unrest.
Youth unemployment needs a multi-dimensional approach that affects both the supply and the demand side of the labour market. With respect to the supply side, educational systems need adjustment in a systematic manner. This requires more focus on vocational training, technical education and digital literacy programmes that prepares the youth with skills suitable to jobs that actually exist. Greater interaction between educational institutions and employers — internship programmes, apprenticeships, co-creating curriculum — goes a long way in closing the gap between graduate skills and market requirements.
On the demand side, this would require governments to offer targeted incentives to businesses—especially small and medium enterprises—to hire and train young people. Youth recruitment is also commercially attractive when compared to tax credits, trial wages and lower-cost young hires. Those jobs successful public sector job creation addresses urgent social needs — in the fields of community care, restoration and digital infrastructure — provide a source of employment that both supplies families with meaningful work and simultaneously serves useful purposes by lowering greenhouse emissions.
Lastly, career guidance and mentorship programmes, which are offered from secondary school onwards, would ensure young people find it easier to enter the world of work and make well-informed and evidence-based choices about courses taken, as well as earn the professional networks that are required in many competitive job markets.
To sum up, youth unemployment is truly a painful thing to take, both for the individual and society at large damaging mental health, economic productivity, and social cohesion. To address this challenge will require a concerted effort across education, employment policy and business engagement — longhaul commitments that recognize that young people should not be seen as liability but instead as the most important investment any society can make for its future.