The UN labour agency warns of a “youth jobs crisis in both developed and developing countries, with young people aged 15 to 24 finding it increasingly difficult to obtain decent employment and future prospects are dim.”
As it released its “Global Employment Trends for Youth: 2011 Update,” the International Labour Organization (ILO) noted on October 19, 2011 that the global economic crisis led to a “substantial” increase in youth unemployment rates, reversing earlier favourable trends over the past decade.
At the peak of the crisis period in 2009, the global youth unemployment rate saw its largest annual increase on record, rising from 11.8 per cent to 12.7 per cent between 2008 and 2009 – an unprecedented increase of 4.5 million unemployed youth worldwide.
The average increase of the pre-crisis period (1997-2007) was less than 100,000 persons per year.