Youth hands for boredom – Newspaper Kommersant No. 151 (7352) of 08/19/2022

According to the ILO forecast, the level of youth unemployment in the world will decrease only by the beginning of next year – and will still remain above pre-pandemic levels. In 2021, according to experts, the number of unemployed youth in the world amounted to 75.1 million people, which is almost 8 million people more than in 2019. This figure could be higher, but the proportion of those who lost their jobs moved into the category of those who do not work and do not study, and it has risen for the first time since 2005.

At the end of 2021, the youth unemployment rate in the world continued to grow – its reduction is possible only by 2023. This conclusion was reached by ILO experts who studied the possible prospects in the labor market for people aged 15–24 and published the report “Global Youth Employment Trends in 2022”.

Thus, according to the ILO, in 2021 the number of unemployed youth in the world amounted to 75.1 million people, which is almost 8 million more than in 2019, and 4.1 million more than in 2020. The unemployment rate has also increased over the years – from 13.5% to 15.6%, which is almost three times higher than the same indicator for the entire economically active population. In 2023, according to the ILO forecast, youth unemployment will decrease to 14.9%, and the number of unemployed people will decrease to 73 million people.

Although, according to ILO experts, in all countries of the world the pandemic has been the main reason for the loss of jobs for young people, its impact has been heterogeneous.

Although unemployment rose everywhere, its largest increase (by 6.8 percentage points) was recorded in North America. On the contrary, in Central and Western Asia, this indicator changed the least, increasing only by 0.7 p.p. by 1.5 percentage points, and the second – by 2.9 percentage points due to the fact that some young people who lost their jobs quickly left the labor market.

In North Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Arab States, and Central and Western Asia, unemployment rates among young women were much higher than among young men. In contrast, unemployment among young women is significantly lower than among young men in North America and East Asia.

The global youth unemployment rate could be even higher if some of those who lost their jobs did not move into the NEET group (Not in Employment, Education or Training – people who do not work and do not study and, therefore, are gradually losing touch with the labor market). Already in 2020, almost one in four (23.3%) young people had NEET status, that is, their share increased by almost 1.5 p.p. over the year, while in the past it decreased by a similar amount (1. 3 p.p.) took almost 15 years, from 2005 to 2019. While women’s NEET fell by 2.7 percentage points between 2005 and 2019, men’s NEET rates remained relatively stable, narrowing the gender gap in NEET rates from 19.8 percentage points to 15.7 percentage points during that time. In terms of NEET, men were much more affected (+2.2 p.p.) by the COVID-19 crisis than women (+0.9 p.p.). However, in 2020, young women were twice as likely as young men to be NEET.

On the contrary, in Russia, the situation of young people in the labor market during the pandemic turned out to be almost more prosperous than that of adult workers.

As with the latter, the unemployment rate among the former increased by 20-30% in the very first months of 2020, but by the beginning of 2021 it returned to almost pre-pandemic values, while the same indicator for the entire labor market as a whole decreased more slowly and came to the starting point a few months later. Nevertheless, in 2021, the Ministry of Labor proposed introducing a separate state program to support youth employment and launched it this year.

Anastasia Manuylova