Unemployment: Lost hope searching for jobs
Global crisis likely has hit young people than adult. The latest report of the ILO Global Employment Trends for Youth 2012 still consistently demonstrates the increasing uncertainty about hope for improvement in the labour market for young people. The report shown gloomy outlook that 75 million youth aged 15 to 24 are unemployed. If we compare with 2007, the statistic was increased of 4 million. The crisis-induced withdrawal from the labour force amounts to 6.4 million young people worldwide, and is particularly pronounced in the Developed economies and European Union.
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It is also hard for young people to find jobs, if they finding a job that the only jobs they can find are in precarious conditions that make them suffer a higher risk of low income and poverty as a result. Therefore, the report of ILO also indicated that more than 150 million young people are living on less than $1.25 a day.
Indeed, the crisis has been disproportionately severe for young people around the world. Discouraged by high youth unemployment rates, many young people have given up the job. ILO also estimated that it may take 4-5 years before jobs rebound. Indeed, the economic crisis wiped out the chance of young people gains in employment, long term unemployment have also affected on losing skills and their earning potential.
Political commitment and innovative approaches are needed to youth unemployment and jobs crisis. This was also mentioned by Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese opposition political leader and Nobel Prize recipient, on her landmark speech at the International Labour Conference in Geneva on 14 June. She highlighted the plight of jobless youth. “It is not so much joblessness as hopelessness that threatens our future. Unemployed youth lose confidence in the society that has failed to give them the chance to realize their potential, “she said. She also stressed the need to equip young people with the skills needed to enter the world of work “vocational training should be linked to job creation is imperative if we are to safeguard the future by giving our youth the capacity to handle effectively that responsibility that will inevitably fall to them one day,” she said.
Growth in precarious employment
The global financial crisis has given wrongly prescription for many governments in imposing austerity as their policy measure on the economic recovery process with budget cuts. Austerity has worsen the situation that destroyed jobs creation, in Spain, the austerity measures has made a growing sense of hopeless and anger among young people that they cannot find job or if they could get job but with low pay. In Greece, to make the economy more competitive, the government pledged to cut the minimum wage and make labour markets more flexibly but resulted in weakening job security.
Young people paying the high price to the crisis and budget cuts that disproportionally affected them. Precarious work is on the increase that put them in working in long-hours, on short-term and/or informal contract, low pay, little or no social protection, minimal training and no voice at work. It not only rose in developing countries but also in the developed countries as the precarious work provide employers with “flexible’ and cheaper workforce, undermining the very concept of job security.
- young people in the European Union were four times as likely as adults to be temporary employees, with 35.2 per cent of youth employees on temporary contracts, compared with 8.9 per cent for adults (over 25 years of age);
- in developing economies, a relatively high number of young people are likely to engage in unpaid family work, starting their working life supporting informal family businesses or farms;
- nearly 21 million people are victims of forced labour across the world, in which 5.5 million (26 %) are below 18 years, trapped in jobs which they were coerced or deceived into and which they cannot leave
- These situations also happen across the public sector, where precarious works are fast becoming common that linked to public sector employment cuts, privatisation and outsourcing.
Workers with precarious employment experiencing lack of job security, working in long hours, low wages, limited control over workplace conditions, little protection from health and safety risks in the workplace and less opportunity for training and career progression. Even when directly employed, precarious workers throughout the world and across different industries are frequently denied their right to join a union or collectively bargain precisely because of their employment status.
What are the solutions?
