"UN group: Vast numbers of unemployed youth threaten global stability" [View all]

[applegrove]

UN group: Vast numbers of unemployed youth threaten global stability

By Kallie Kurtz at Global Envision

http://www.globalenvision.org/2012/08/21/un-group-vast-numbers-unemployed-youth-threaten-global-stability

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The world's 75 million unemployed youth are dangerously concentrated, increasingly connected and more numerous than ever, the International Labor Organization found last month. To protect international security, the ILO suggested, the world's governments must prioritize creating jobs for their young citizens. Seeing a meaningful future in which they can provide for themselves and their families is absolutely necessary for youth to feel they have a stake in security and stability.

That 75 million figure was so staggering that the ILO has now made youth employment one of its top priorities. For countries, non-profit organizations and companies, if facing this problem is not already a priority, the vast number of unemployed youth will soon make it one.

With 50 percent of the global population under 27, issues facing youth are everyone’s issues. Of the 200 million unemployed around the world, 40 percent are youth. The OECD and ILO have also published regional numbers, defining "youth" as those between their mid-teens and mid-twenties. The youth bulge in the Middle East, where youth unemployment has reached almost 25 percent, has been highly publicized since the advent of the Arab Spring. Seemingly huge, it's just one microcosm of a much larger, complex problem. In Europe, certain countries are doing okay, like Norway and Germany with just over 7 percent youth unemployment. Yet others, most notably Spain and Greece, have reached youth unemployment levels of over 50 percent. In the United States, 35 percent of youth between ages 20 and 24 are unemployed. In South Asia and Latin America, the unemployment rate sits around 15 percent. East Asia’s youth unemployment rates are the lowest around the world at just above 9 percent, but most young people with jobs work in poverty.

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"When people living on the brink lose their livelihoods, they are more likely to turn to arms—either because they are angry at perceived injustice, or because they see few other options and feel they have little to lose," The Council on Foreign Relations' Terra Lawson-Remer wrote last month.


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