27.7 % of Ecuador's population is young - with young defined as between 18 and 29 years old... The significance of youth in national demography, demands greater political will for the development of public policies aimed at youth. Access to the labour market is an area of particular importance to young people. Labour market access for large groups of youth is hampered by poor or inadequate education and skills, as well as lack of work experience. In particular young people in poverty, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, disabled, women and sexual minorities face discrimination in the labour market.

...These problems affecting youth [demand for skilled labour, impact of trade liberalization, expansion of the wage gap between skilled and unskilled, casualisation of labour relations] have not received an effective response from public institutions related to young people, employment policies or the labor market. The weakness of our institutions, and the lack of coordination between them contribute to an absence of policies, programs and projects for this segment of the population.

The issue for young Ecuadorians is not only access to employment but also access to decent work. The jobs they occupy are often low skilled and their employment conditions temporary and precarious. In 2010, the unemployment rate among youth aged 15 to 29 was 9.8 per cent, but their under-employment rate reached 54.9 per cent.

Ecuadorian out-migration flows jumped in the wake of the economic crisis that impacted the country at the end of the 1990s. More than half of the Ecuadorians that have left the country in the past decade are young people between the ages of 15 and 29. They represented 57.7 per cent of migrants according to the latest living conditions survey carried out by the Ecuadorian Institute of Statistics.