Youth employment
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Youth employment

The world is facing a growing youth employment crisis. Unemployment in the Central and South-Eastern Europe region peaked at the highest regional rate in the world in 2009, with vulnerable groups bearing much of the impact of the global economic crisis. Youth unemployment rose more than in any other developing region in 2009; one in five economically active youth in the region were unemployed in 2010.
 
The transition to a market economy, years of conflict and economic downturn worsened the situation of many youth in the region in the past. Although economic prospects improved in the last years before the economic crisis, employment outcomes have been rather poor for the overall population and for young people in particular. Compared to their adult counterparts, young people continue to experience lower employment and higher informality.

Featured


The UN Joint Programme on Youth Employment and Migration has taken a group of youth from the neighborhood of Kombinat to Kep i Rodonit to see the disaster caused by the plastic waste accumulated on the beautiful shores of Albania.

Highlight

  1. Feature article

    An old craft creates opportunities for Albania’s new generation
    1 May 2012

    Hate Ora has transformed herself from an informal worker into a successful woman entrepreneur with the help of the MDG-Fund’s UN Joint Programme on Youth Employment and Migration, a collaboration between four UN agencies and the Albanian government to create decent work opportunities for marginalized young people and to help the country manage the internal migration of youth in search of jobs.

  2. Video

    Working Together to Boost Youth Employment in Serbia
    January 1, 2011

    Serbia was hit hard by the global economic crisis, particularly its young people, who are living a “crisis within the crisis”. Often what they learned in school doesn’t match what employers are looking for, making it hard for them to find work. It’s worse for young people who didn’t do well in school, or dropped out. But in Serbia, the government, trade unions and employers, working together, have designed new policy interventions to give young people, especially those with low levels of education, a chance to find a decent job and keep it.

ILO assistance

The ILO Decent Work Technical Support Team and Country Office for Central and Eastern Europe provides technical and advisory services to governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations on youth employment policy development and implementation to improve employment possibilities for youth in the region. The ILO Budapest team helps to build the capacity of labour market institutions, including the social partners, on the design, monitoring and evaluation of active labour market policies targeting disadvantaged youth. The office also works to increase the effectiveness of national employment services in the region to deliver programmes and services aimed at enhancing the employability and improving employment prospects of young people and to strengthen the capacity of social partners in promoting decent work for youth.

What's new

  1. Four million more jobless youth since 2007

    17 May 2012

    The global youth unemployment rate for 2012 remains stuck at crisis peak levels and is not expected to come down until at least 2016, says the ILO in its Global Employment Trends for Youth 2012 report.

  2. UN Joint Programme in Serbia helped 2,830 disadvantaged youth to receive training and jobs

    20 April 2012

    To mark the successful completion of the United Nations Joint Programme “Youth Employment and Migration” (YEM), funded by the Spanish Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund (MDG-F), a final conference was organized on 24 April 2012 in Belgrade, Serbia, presenting the significant results, achievements and potential way forward in addressing the youth employment and migration challenges of the country.

  3. Youth employment should be a national priority in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

    29 March 2012

    A national consultation on youth employment took place in Skopje, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia on March 29, 2012 to tackle the alarmingly high youth jobless rate of the country.

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