G20 must focus on youth jobs, says the OECD
LABOUR ministers from the G20 must focus on solving mass unemployment among young people, the Organisation for Co-operation and Development (OECD) said yesterday.
Senior government officials are meeting in the Mexican city of Guadalajara tomorrow and already face protests from young trade unionists over growing international joblessness.
And now the Paris-based think tank has added its voice to the chorus demanding “concrete action”. “Young people continue to bear the brunt of the jobs crisis, with nearly 11m 15 to 24-year-olds out of work in OECD countries in early 2012,” the group said.
The youth unemployment rate across the G20 was measured at 17.1 per cent in March, close to its recession high of 18.3 per cent recorded in November 2009.
In some countries, particularly those at the centre of the growing Eurozone debt crisis, over half of young people are unemployed.
“In Spain, youth unemployment was 17.4 per cent in March 2007 and had risen to 51.1 per cent by March 2012,” the OECD report found.
“More than one in five young people in the labour market in France, the UK, Sweden, Poland, Ireland and Italy are out of work.”