Tackling the challenges of youth employment

For many decades, governments and international partners focused on macroeconomic stability and structural adjustment as a means to promote economic growth and thereby create  jobs. The underlying faith in this approach was that these measures alone would lead to job creation and poverty reduction, for youth and adults alike.

There is now a growing consensus among governments and development partners that specific policy measures are required to tackle the main barriers to employment generation for One relatively effective measure is the public works programme, which has been  implemented in a number of African countries with some success in creating jobs for unskilled youth.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is involved in a number of projects that target job creation for young people as part of their Employment Intensive Investment Programme (EIPP). EIPPs are public works-type projects in the area of infrastructure, and have  been implemented in over 20 African countries. Under the umbrella of this initiative and with  assistance from donors, a number of projects in labour-based road construction and maintenance have been supported on the continent.

Facing a dire situation in the labour market, many young people stop actively searching  for a job. A South African survey in 2000 revealed, for example, that 39 per cent of unemployed youth had stopped searching for employment.3 Job-search assistance can be provided or funded by the government to help encourage African youth to re-engage with the labour market through activities like writing job applications and curriculum vitae, and preparing for interviews.

A number of global initiatives have been set up to accelerate efforts in tackling youth unemployment and underemployment. For example, the United Nations, along with the ILO and World Bank, established the Youth Employment Network (YEN) in 2001 to provide support to the global commitment of “developing and implementing strategies that give young people everywhere a real chance to find decent and productive work” as embedded in the United Nations Millennium Declaration of 2000.

National and regional programmes aside, young people continually demonstrate their  own ability to cope with the situation they face in the labour market. One response is  entrepreneurship as addressed in the next section.