In August 2010, the ILO published the Global Employment Trends for Youth: Special issue on the impact of the global economic crisis on youth. The report presented an analysis of the latest available world and regional aggregates of key labour market indicators for young people aged 15 to 24 years, with a specific focus on how young people fared in the face of the recent global economic crisis. One year later, with an environment of growing uncertainty in the economic recovery and stalled recovery in the job market, the ILO revisits the much publicized youth labour market figures and draws the unfortunate conclusion that the situation facing youth in the labour market has not improved and that prospects for the future are not much better. Not only do youth unemployment rates continue to rise in developed economies, but also the increasing length of the job search is leading some young people to become discouraged and fall out of the labour force entirely. In developing regions, on the other hand, many young people continue to work while living in conditions of extreme poverty.

The report examines the latest global and regional labour market trends for youth as well as country-level data on indicators such as youth unemployment, long-term unemployment, part-time employment and working poverty. With as much as one in three unemployed persons today between the ages of 15 and 24 years, political pressure to prevent the disheartening of a “lost generation” increases and governments are called on to shift priorities toward greater investment in youth. It concludes with some recommendations for policy responses that can help to prevent the current crisis in the youth labour markets from becoming structural.