ILO shares perspective on career guidance for sustainable integration of youth in the labour market
The ILO discussed its ongoing work on career guidance at the launch event of an ETF-UNICEF study on career pathways for youth.
12 March 2024
Young employee in a supermarket
© Michael Burrows
The ILO considers career guidance a fundamental policy instrument to achieve a sustainable integration of youth in the labour market, and a key tool to help workers adjust to changes brought by technological, climate and demographic changes.
Lieve Verboven, Director of the ILO Office for the European Union and the Benelux countries, shared how career guidance relates to the ILO’s normative framework, and highlighted the ILO’s key role in leveraging partnerships at regional and global level to foster the design and implementation of effective practices for supporting youth career pathways.
The study “Empowering Futures: Demystifying Career Pathways through a Youth Lens”, jointly authored by the European Training Foundation (ETF) and UNICEF, is the outcome of consultations and surveys with 9471 young people between 14 and 34 years. It presents 11 policy implications based on youth perceptions’ of the current career guidance systems across Europe and Central Asia, with an emphasis on the Western Balkans.
The ILO has found that an increasing number of young people in the Western Balkans, particularly those aged between 25 and 29 years old, experience labour inactivity, which seems to result from a lack of engagement in education, employment, or training (the so-called NEETs). Nonetheless, governments in the region have shown political willingness to address this labour crisis and skills mismatch. Their ongoing piloting and scaling up of the Youth Guarantee Schemes and related Implementation Plans offers youth training opportunities within four months of leaving education or of unemployment.
To support these national efforts, in June 2021, the ILO, the European Commission and the ETF, established a joint Technical Assistance Facility on the Youth Guarantee. The planned national actions include the digitalization of career services (Serbia), the combination of work-based learning and coaching support (North Macedonia), the establishment of a multi-partner career guidance network involving Public Employment Services, municipalities, and NGOs (Albania and Montenegro) or the improvement of the legal framework for a more effective career guidance system (Kosovo).
These interventions signal a paradigm shift on career guidance, away from the traditional information-based approach towards a lifelong learning approach that is inclusive. Ms Verboven also underlined the need for youth-centered innovative instruments that give young generations the opportunity to realize themselves as individuals and as workers, and to contribute to the productivity and socio-economic development of society at large.
The ILO remains committed to supporting its tripartite constituents – governments, workers and employers – independently and through partnerships, to share knowledge, develop tailored methodologies for career guidance, and reform the institutional and human resource capacities of the actors involved.
As the current coordinator of the International Agency Working Group on Career Guidance (IAG WGCG), the ILO recently held an informal career guidance webinar: “From school to work, from work to life”.
Lieve Verboven, Director of the ILO Office for the European Union and the Benelux countries, shared how career guidance relates to the ILO’s normative framework, and highlighted the ILO’s key role in leveraging partnerships at regional and global level to foster the design and implementation of effective practices for supporting youth career pathways.
The study “Empowering Futures: Demystifying Career Pathways through a Youth Lens”, jointly authored by the European Training Foundation (ETF) and UNICEF, is the outcome of consultations and surveys with 9471 young people between 14 and 34 years. It presents 11 policy implications based on youth perceptions’ of the current career guidance systems across Europe and Central Asia, with an emphasis on the Western Balkans.
The ILO has found that an increasing number of young people in the Western Balkans, particularly those aged between 25 and 29 years old, experience labour inactivity, which seems to result from a lack of engagement in education, employment, or training (the so-called NEETs). Nonetheless, governments in the region have shown political willingness to address this labour crisis and skills mismatch. Their ongoing piloting and scaling up of the Youth Guarantee Schemes and related Implementation Plans offers youth training opportunities within four months of leaving education or of unemployment.
To support these national efforts, in June 2021, the ILO, the European Commission and the ETF, established a joint Technical Assistance Facility on the Youth Guarantee. The planned national actions include the digitalization of career services (Serbia), the combination of work-based learning and coaching support (North Macedonia), the establishment of a multi-partner career guidance network involving Public Employment Services, municipalities, and NGOs (Albania and Montenegro) or the improvement of the legal framework for a more effective career guidance system (Kosovo).
These interventions signal a paradigm shift on career guidance, away from the traditional information-based approach towards a lifelong learning approach that is inclusive. Ms Verboven also underlined the need for youth-centered innovative instruments that give young generations the opportunity to realize themselves as individuals and as workers, and to contribute to the productivity and socio-economic development of society at large.
The ILO remains committed to supporting its tripartite constituents – governments, workers and employers – independently and through partnerships, to share knowledge, develop tailored methodologies for career guidance, and reform the institutional and human resource capacities of the actors involved.
As the current coordinator of the International Agency Working Group on Career Guidance (IAG WGCG), the ILO recently held an informal career guidance webinar: “From school to work, from work to life”.