By Antony Mutunga
Global leaders at the Davos Forum in 2015 had discussions on the major problems affecting the world, which included the economic position of the world as the main topic. But they forgot to tackle one issue that threatens to become the next global crisis which has already started, in the form of youth unemployment. Youth unemployment has been growing at an alarming rate worldwide with more than 70 million youths unemployed, which constitutes to about a third of the world’s youth population.
The International Labour Organisation has projected the global youth unemployment rate to be at 13.2 percent in 2016 which is almost three times compared to the adult unemployment rate. According to the ILO, youth unemployment describes unemployed persons as those individuals between the ages of 15 and 24 years without work, seeking work in the recent past, and currently available for work. Persons who are not looking for jobs but have arrangements for a future job are counted as unemployed as well.
A report published by the Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE), which is part of the World Bank, projects that in the next 10 years, one billion of the youth population is expected to be searching for unemployment. The report goes on to predict that if the global economy remains in its current state, then 40 per cent or less of this youth population will be able to find a job. In fact, the global economy has got the daunting task of ensuring that 60million jobs are created this year alone, just to be able to keep the employment rate at its current state.
S4YE Coalition Manager, Matt Hobson, said, “Young people account for 40 pc of the world’s population (the largest youth generation in human history) but they are disproportionately affected by unemployment, and this is a persistent problem.”
However, not all regions in the world are affected the same way by youth unemployment; the most affected include some parts of Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. For example, Spain and Greece are the worst hit by youth unemployment whereby their rates are 45.3pc and 48.9pc respectively even though the whole European Union zone has a rate of 19.4pc. The Middle East and North Africa (Mena) has a rate of 27.2 per cent.
Africa, which…
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