Last week the International Labour Organization (ILO) published its latest report on youth unemployment revealing that approximately 17.1% of employed young people across the world have stopped working since the beginning of the Corona crisis and those who have continued to work have seen their working hours reduced by 23%.
The fourth edition of “ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the world of work”, which monitors the effects of the pandemic, showed that the COVID‑19 crisis is hitting young people faster and harder. The exclusion of young people from the labour market, given the long-lasting impacts of the pandemic, is “one of the greatest dangers for society”, the report said. Furthermore, the report states that almost 77 per cent (or 328 million) of the world’s young workers were in informal jobs, compared with around 60 per cent of adult workers (aged 25 and above). Even before the crisis, more than 267 million young people were not in employment, education or training (NEET), including almost 68 million unemployed young people.
Eurodiaconia continues to identify and promote innovative youth work among its members to fight youth unemployment and, for instance, Eurodiaconia contributed in the previous months to the discussions around the reinforced Youth Guarantee. Later this year on October 1st, we will organise our “Access to Employment” network meeting online. The focus of the event will be on initiatives and effective strategies to facilitate the transition of young(er) and old(er) workers (back) into employment and to promote an intergenerational approach among people with low employability. Also, as a follow-up to our “Empower You(th)! Project“, Eurodiaconia has been looking to expand its collection of good practices and to further assess its role in terms of youth unemployment, marginalisation and radicalisation prevention through social inclusion and published a policy paper in March this year.
To find out more about the “ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the world of work“, please have a look at their website here.
To learn more about our collection of good practices to fight youth unemployment, please refer to our study “Fighting youth unemployment, marginalisation and radicalisation prevention through social inclusion in Europe“.