Morokhovets K. S., Mudrenko A. A.
Oles Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University
GLOBAL YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT
Almost 75 million young people are out of work nowadays. High youth unemployment is one of the biggest problems confronting societies around the world – but do we really know how bad the situation is?
The statistics are terrifying – the United Nations' International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that close to 75 million 15 to 24-year-olds around the world are out of work. But how accurate is this number?
All unemployment rates – including youth unemployment – are calculated as percentages not of the total population, but of something called the "economically active population". 75 million or 12.6% of young people are unemployed worldwide.7.5 million are not in education or training. Youth unemployment is the highest in North Africa – 27.9% and the lowest in East Asia – 9%It is defined as the employed plus the unemployed – but that leaves a huge number of other people out of the calculation.
This is because most countries calculate their unemployment rates by carrying out regular labour force surveys which ask people a series of questions which help place them into one of three categories: employed, unemployed, economically inactive.
The unemployment rate is calculated by dividing the number of unemployed people by the number of economically active people, which includes both employed and unemployed people.
The more young people who choose to stay in education, the bigger the pool of economically inactive young people grows – while the pool of young people who are economically activeshrinks.
Any increase in the proportion of young people who decide to delay entering the labour market and keep studying – and remain economically inactive – has the effect of increasing unemployment figures because the number by which the unemployed population gets divided by shrinks. But importantly, the overall number of young people stays the same.
So, as more and more young adults choose to stay in education, the economically active population – the denominator used to calculate the unemployment rate – reduces, and appears to drive up unemployment.
As a result youth unemployment rates can distort the picture of how bad the job prospects are for a country's young people.
In the developing world, where it is not so easy to stay in full-time education and there is not the same level of unemployment benefits to fall back on, young people are often forced to take any work that is available, which can be poorly paid and sporadic.
Unemployment is undoubtedly a huge obstacle confronting millions of young people across the globe. But there is huge difficulty in comparing national data, which is often inconsistent, incomplete or simply unavailable. This problem is compounded by the distorting effect of large numbers of young people remaining in education and so a degree of caution should be exercised when quoting unemployment rates.
The level of youth unemployment increases in Ukraine. Before the crisis, it was 7.7 percent, in 2011 it rose to almost 20%. Problem is the system of training. It does not meet the requirementsof the market and employers. In Ukraine there are plenty of economists and lawyers. But there are very few manual workers. In addition, we annually produce more than twice as many specialists withhigher education than workers.
In Ukraine, in February the unemployment rate rose by 0.1 % – to 2.1%. Youth unemployment in January 2013 was 19%. By 2017 this figure is expected to decrease to 13%.More than 40% of the unemployed are young people under 35.
In my opinion the government should pay more attention to the problem of unemployment in our country ant cake effective measures to tackle it.