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Challenges to Improving Youth Employment in Latin America |
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 Good macroeconomic conditions are not sufficient to foster greater participation by this group in the labour market. Joining the job market is a key rite of passage to adult life. Work is a path to social integration, a source of personal identity, a place for citizen participation and a motor of material progress. While entry into the labour market is a determining factor in the lives of the immense majority of youths, recent economic and labour conditions have not helped this process, states the article La inserción laboral de los jóvenes: Características, tensiones y desafíos, (Labour Insertion of Youth: Characteristics, tension and challenges), recently published in CEPAL Review No. 92.
Author Jürgen Weller - Economics Affairs Official at ECLAC - reviews the characteristics of labour market entry for Latin American youth, its recent evolution, the tensions affecting this process and challenges to improvements.
Recent decades have witnessed a general deterioration of labour markets in Latin America and the Caribbean, a situation which also affects youths. Between 1990 and 2003, the creation of waged employment was weak and the region's unemployment rate increased from 7.5% to 11%. While the economic recovery of subsequent years set unemployment rates back to a single digit, they have not dropped to their 1990 level. Furthermore, informal labour has increased, as has the precariousness of working conditions.
 In Latin America in 2003/2004, youth unemployment rates of 15.9% more than doubled adult unemployment rates of 6.6%. The gap between youth and adult rates is similar to that between men and women. More recently, unemployment has increased for both age groups, with the increase in youth unemployment reflecting the general deterioration of regional labour markets more than any specific characteristics of youths.
In addition, the gap between expectations of improved job possibilities among youths - due to educational, demographic, technological and economic factors -- and the recent evolution of labour market entry have created a series of tensions. A favorable macroeconomic context is an indispensable requisite for significant advance in labour insertion, the author states. The article reviews diverse policy options to foster the entry of youth into the labour market, classifying these into four groups: employability, gender equity, entrepreneurial spirit and job creation.
The author concludes by noting that, to improve the entry of youths into the labour market, a virtuous circle must be created between a favourable context - including positive macroeconomic conditions - and attention to the human, social and cultural capital of youths, and especially disadvantaged youths.
Click here to see the full article (in Spanish) on the ECLAC website.
The complete issue of CEPAL Review No. 92 is also posted.
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telephones: (56 2) 210 2380/2149. |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 14 September 2007 )
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