Youth unemployment and social crises

 Listen to this here:

Among the more tragic outcomes of this pandemic era (and, no, it is not yet over) has been the declining ability by countries all over the world to address the serious challenge of youth unemployment and the productive participation of our young people in society.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) has suggested that young people are at least three times less likely to gain access to meaningful employment than their seniors. At this time of the pandemic, the young have been the most significant victims of shrinking, undermined labour markets.

In most instances this means that among the growing cohort of unemployed you can expect to encounter the under-25s in expanding numbers – particularly young women.

In its 2022 youth employment report, the ILO estimate of youth not engaged in either employment, education or training in the Latin American and Caribbean region is 20.5%.

No one would argue that the Caribbean statistic is likely to be considerably higher given our thin resource bases, high vulnerability to external shocks and weakened resilience in some key sectors. In T&T, the rate was estimated at 9.12% in pre-pandemic 2019.

Bear in mind, the technical folks working on these things assess youth unemployment as the share of the labour force ages 15-24 without work but available for and seeking employment.

Our comparatively low percentage could, in that light, be symptomatic of a severe crisis being manifest in a variety of ways as growing numbers withdraw from contention for jobs.

Increasing the official age of retirement - which is an entirely understandable compulsion given the bunching of state retirement benefits - can also have the impact of keeping older people in positions that could otherwise be made available to the young.

There is much to dampen the prospect of youth employment. But also no shortage of challenges to independent youth entrepreneurship within both the formal and informal sectors.

The pursuit of opportunities in the informal economy (which accounts for 77% of youth employment globally) is frequently discouraged and even punished here.

There is indeed evidence that our informal sector has grown during the pandemic. In many instances, it has met public demand for goods and services more seamlessly than obtained in the past. Business groupings need to make greater efforts to embrace the new initiatives and to provide greater support to bring recognition and legitimacy to them.

Meanwhile, the focus of ILO efforts to generate increased movement from the informal to formal has not been readily embraced by either the state or the network of private institutions assigned implicit responsibility for so doing. The benefits of achieving this are readily expressed in access to social protection mechanisms.

Instead, these most vulnerable subjects of the scourge of brittle labour markets, the young, are routinely and pointedly excluded from participating in those areas that rely on the energy and creativity they bring naturally to the table.

State agencies, banks, insurance companies and others seemingly lie in wait to shatter dreams. Labour unions pay them absolutely no mind and the organised private sector is slow to embrace them. This is quite a formidable alignment of countervailing forces.

To their credit, some of the larger more successful business enterprises have attempted to provide a measure of support, even as a form of enlightened self-interest.

Dismantling mechanisms to promote the required social dialogue, such as the National Tripartite Advisory Council, is thus among the worst things that can happen at this time.

In this respect, our labour unions are drifting into a rapidly moving stream of irrelevance, beyond its undeniable role in the collective bargaining process.

Broader social activism has been abandoned with little input into modern realities that impact on the world of work, social peace, and the interests of the people of tomorrow.

Additionally, while there has been understandable concern by all about our young men, girls and women actually account for a higher proportion of unemployed youth than their male counterparts and face a multiplicity of unique, corresponding risks.

Globally, young men are almost 1.5 times more likely than young women to be employed.

This is one of those times when the macro-economic fundamentals cannot stand on their own. Debt to GDP ratios, rates of (jobless) growth, foreign currency cover and what sits idle and unproductive in the banking kitty mean nothing if the reality signals a crisis of the young.

We are not going to be forgiven for dropping the ball on this one. The costs are too high to contemplate. We are already witnessing some inevitable impacts.