Youth employment in the turmoil

Recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) reports on global and regional employment trends show a clear indication of rapidly increasing unemployment. Since February 2009, the OECD and the IMF have also released a frantic flurry of downward revision in their forecasts that the situation is expected to worsen in 2009 with the prediction of massive job cuts and global growth downturns.

Young people are particularly hit hard, paying for the economic crisis. In 2008, youth in Asia and the Pacific were more than three times as likely as adults to be unemployed. In South-East Asia, the youth unemployment rate already reached 15% in 2008. This figure is expected to increase sharply as the labor market is becoming more selective and young job seekers find it difficult to integrate into the labor force, competing against a rising pool of more experienced (and recently unemployed) jobseekers due to their lack of relevant skills and training. In China, for example, an estimated 6.1 million new college graduates will enter the labour market in 2009, joining the four million from previous years who are still seeking employment.

To ease the youth unemployment crisis in the region, Japanese government, the Asian Development Bank, and the Ministry of Labor of South Korea for example have introduced new series of initiatives.

With the youth unemployment rate reaching a four year high of 8.7% in February 2009, the Labor Ministry of South Korea presented a package of measures to temporarily alleviate the youth unemployment crisis. According to reported plans, the Ministry is planning on spending $258.4 million to provide job training programs, such as short-term internships and Youth Entrepreneurships. The Ministry would also provide a certain amount of government subsidies to those which hire young workers who have been unemployed for more than three months.

Japanese government and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) started supporting the poorest communities of Cambodia to provide job trainings for youth. ADB’s Board of Directors approved a US$2 million grant from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction (JFPR) to the Government of Cambodia to boost rural incomes and it will also fund skills training for jobless and out-of-school youth.

Looking forward, uncertainty about the effectiveness of the new government policies on youth employment still shadows over the job market. With the vast amount of support from the governments and the Asian Development Bank, the regions are expecting to reinforce the job markets for young people. However, the more important question is whether the vocational trainings and subsidized funding will be effective enough in mitigating youth unemployment over the next few years.

For more information, you can look at:

http://www.ilo.org/global/Themes/Youth_Employments/lang--en/index.htm
http://www.adb.org/Media/Articles/2009/12862-cambodian-employments-projects/
http://new.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=1123
http://www.chosun.com/national/news/200501/200501270167.html (in Korean)
http://www.adb.org/Documents/Books/Key_Indicators/2008/pdf/Key-Indicators-2008.pdf