Worldwide youth unemployment has reached its highest ever, 13.1%. The ILO brought this alarming issue to light in a report on « Youth Employment Trends » presented at the UN launch of the International Year of Youth.
Youth were affected first by the financial crisis and then by the economic crisis. Neither developed countries nor countries in development were spared from these crises.
Some call it the lost generation, which runs the risk of giving up and being excluded when the economy recovers. The risk for our societies is not only a loss of wealth due to the increase in under employment, but also future consequences of social and societal exclusion of a generation.
Gianni Rosas, as quoted in Le Monde on 24 August, is even more clear: « Giving up or feeling rejected at an age when one must build one’s identity and future can come with huge discouragement, a loss in self confidence, a distrust for institutions, and a development of risky behavior. »
He urges states to not cut spending on education and training, which he says, would lead to societies with serious social and political risks. « The end of training programs would have an even bigger impact on youth than for the whole of working employees. We certainly mustn’t give up now. » Mr. Rosas implored.
This drop in youth employment is even more brutal since in the previous years, 2002-2007 youth unemployment had decreased from 13% to 11.9%. In 2008-2009 they paid a heavy price for the crisis- the number of unemployed in their category increased to 6.7 million, more than 13%. They were hit twice as hard as adults were and when the recovery begins « we know that companies will be more reluctant to hire people who didn’t work during the crisis, and prefer graduates from after the crisis,» Mr. Rosas continued.
The search and the need for skills during a highly competitive period are immediate requirements. If youth have not benefited from training, they will have no chance to be hired and will quickly fall into poverty, exclusion and discouragement provoking a risk to our democracies. The authors of the ILO report conclude « Youth feel like victims of the system. They focus their anger on those they believe to be responsible: globalization, capitalist greed, domestic national leaders, government corruption, their parents or a specific ethnic group, thus sensitive to any religious or revolutionary speech which might offer them false hope for the future. »
Our country is not sheltered from this risk. Even though the unemployment rate of youth is lower (8.4%), the risks are comparable. Anne Muxel, research director for the CNRS, explained in an interview in Le Monde that the first consequence of an increase in youth unemployment is political defiance. The second is a radicalization that will only benefit extremist groups.
I’ve already spoken many times in this blog about how the social divide is increasingly a division between those who have access to knowledge and those who do not.
The figures from INSEE speak for themselves: in 2009 the unemployment rate of university graduates on the job market for one to four years was 9.6% compared to 49.2% for youth without diplomas.
Eric Maurin, head of L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, confirms that «In the last thirty years, the benefits of education and training have not stopped to increase. »
Such facts prove the enormous importance of our work and our responsibilities.