Tackling youth employment challenges: an overview of possible actions and policy considerations. An introductory guide for employers' organizations
This guide is part of an ongoing effort by the ILO and specifically by the Bureau for Employers’ Activities (ACT/EMP) to strengthen the capacity of employers’ organizations to deal with youth employment, especially in developing and transition countries.
It is aimed at industry experts worldwide who wish to take action on youth unemployment in their own regions or countries. It provides specific employers’ perspectives on youth employment, which can be brought into the debate on policy and action. Ultimately, good policy is a mixture of approaches, in both the short term and the long term, whereby policymakers try to strike a balance between economic reality and feasibility, together with social desirability.
Social dialogue and tripartism, in which employers should be fully engaged, offer the perfect forum in which to search for such a balanced policy mix. This guide seeks to meet to a demand by employers’ organizations for reference material in an area where they are often called upon to take action, and where they hesitate to do so, for lack of the specific skills needed to analyse the whole issue, or for lack of insight into success stories and good practice in other countries.
The guide should be useful for: becoming aware of the dimensions of youth unemployment globally and in specific regions; understanding the impact youth unemployment has on business; making the business case for boosting youth employment, by using economic analysis and labour market data; becoming knowledgeable about good practice and experience in many countries concerning youth employment policy; assessing existing policies and formulating new policies to increase youth employment; putting employers’ perspective in policy debate.
The information in this guide is by no means exhaustive. By selectively pulling together and systematically organizing examples of employer and business initiatives on youth employment, the manual aims to serve as an “ideas bank” for employers and other business people interested in dealing with youth employment pro-actively.
