BUENOS AIRES (ILO News) – Affecting 56 million youth aged 15 to 24  in Latin America and the Caribbean, unemployment and informality pose a major challenge to the creation of decent work in the region, an ILO meeting held this week in the Argentine capital showed.

These young workers account for a little more than  half of the 108 million young people in the region, according to ILO youth employment specialist Guillermo Dema, who highlighted the size of the challenge at the seminar “What works in youth employment policies?”

Over 7.8 million young people in the labour market are unemployed. And of the 48.3 million who have work, 27 million are engaged in informal work, with 30.4 million having no social security coverage.

Organized by the ILO and the European Union regional programme, Eurosocial, the meeting was attended by the EU delegation to Argentina as well as the Argentine Minister of Labour, Employment and Social Security. Its objective was an exchange on “Lessons from Latin American and European experiences”.

The meeting was convened within the framework of the preparations for the IV Global Conference on the Sustained Eradication of Child Labour, to be held from 14 to 16 November in Buenos Aires, which will also analyse and discuss the challenge of generating quality employment for  youth.