One of the goals of this blog is to explore the public policy dimensions of youth (un)employment in both the context of domestic social, economic, and legal policy and in the wider realm of what other states are doing to address youth employment issues. I'm always interested in comparative analysis for determining best practices for public policy initiatives.
It's clear than the recent economic crisis has had enormous impacts on near-term employment prospects for youth in many jurisdictions. Be it Greece where youth unemployment could possibly top 28% by the last quarter of 2010 or within my own circle of friends where precarious employment situations seem to be the norm.
This is an important issue from any number of perspectives. From a human resources standpoint having highly educated young men and women filling unskilled positions or working in the informal economy makes little sense for either employers or government. From a public policy perspective having a significant amount of the population not participating in the labour market or being in a situation of long-term unemployment is problematic.
For a local example of this situation, look at how young people from Ireland are flooding Toronto in sizable numbers. A post on Twitter yesterday from a manager of a local business indicated that 30% of the job applicants were Irish. In a world where globalization is the watchword, the economic crisis has created phenomena that haven't been seen in generations, such as this emigration previously mentioned.
Recently the International Labour Organization (ILO) released a report entitled "Youth Employment in Crisis". It's an excellent summary of the dimensions and the extent that the economic has impacted young people globally. A link to the report appears below:
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