Youth unemployment will continue to be high this year, There is no let up, there will be no improvement.
The Economist reports that the OECD is warning that recovery will be slow and protracted. It forecasts that youth unemployment will still be around 20% by the end of 2011.
" In the mostly rich countries of the OECD, the youth-unemployment rate (the unemployed as a proportion of the labour force aged 15-24) increased by 4.9 percentage points between 2007 and 2009, to 18.4%. By the second quarter of 2010 it had risen to 19.6%. Young people typically struggle to gain employment and are the first to be laid off; in nine countries more than one in four are now jobless. Spain has the highest youth-unemployment rate, at 42%, more than twice the unemployment rate of adults aged 25-54. In New Zealand, Sweden and Luxembourg, the youth-to-adult unemployment ratio is more than four."
So what's the solution? Significantly, the one place where youth unemployment is less of a problem is Germany where there has been significant investment in apprenticeships. That could be a model for the rest of the OECD.
More investment for apprenticeships and vocational training is the only answer. It doesn't require much investment but it creates a more skilled and diverse work-force. Similarly, the government should provide economic incentives to companies to hire young people, particularly those who have completed or are completing apprenticeship schemes.
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