The World Bank in 2007 reported that youth unemployment in St. Lucia was the highest in the Eastern Caribbean: 44% as compared to 15.2% for the entire Latin America and Caribbean region. In a study undertaken in December 2007, the Bureau of Health Education and Promotion of the Ministry of Health, reported that the unemployment rate for the 15 to 25 year age group was 39% for males and 44% for females.

And According to the World Bank in 2007 “....In spite of the rapid expansion of educational opportunity, the work-force of St. Lucia is still poorly equipped for the requirements of the knowledge economy of the 21st century. The vast majority do not have educational certificates at the secondary level that are required for building the flexible work-force needed to treat with a changing global economy in which the competitiveness of a country is determined by the human resource stock and its capacity to rise to technological and scientific shifts”.

Several were of the view that the education system and the irrelevance of the curriculum have contributed to their inability to get a job, to move out of poverty and to function effectively in community life. Unemployment is high among the youth and several complain of not being able to get jobs and even if they do manage to get a job, the pay is so low that it is insufficient.

Poverty also leads young people to become involved in illegal and criminal activities. Several admitted to using and selling drugs, and to being involved in gangs and crime and saw these activities as providing them with the money they needed to get the things they wanted.

Youth violence is of high-visibility and of high-priority concern in St. Lucia, as across the Caribbean. Little accurate data is available on how many young people are involved in the judicial and prison systems but what is known is that increasing numbers of them are coming into conflict with the law and do not have access to programs that can adequately rehabilitate them into society. Not only has violence grown in recent decades, but youth are also disproportionately represented in the incidence and severity of this trend, both as victims and as perpetrators. Moreover, violent crimes are being committed at younger ages.