Global Youth Employment - An Overview of Need and Interventions

Globally, youth represent 25 percent of the world’s working-age population. They constitute the future promise and development of every nation. They represent its political leaders, tradesmen, academics, doctors, innovators, and artists. Institutions, both public and private, are realizing the need to invest in building the capacity of young people in order to assure a sustainable future for their society. This report, in accordance with the United Nations, defines youth as those individuals between the ages of 15 - 24. Young people today are faced with unprecedented challenges as well as opportunities and must be seen as a unique population with their own set of diverse characteristics. This report focuses on the topic of Youth Employment Promotion (YEP), a field that combines issues of social and economic development for young people. YEP programs, by integrating a thorough understanding of labor market forces with youth development issues, can effectively help youth transition to secure and stable employment and begin their working lives with dignity and respect. Section I of this report provides an overview of global indicators and an analysis of the current status of youth at the regional level, including data on youth demographics, disadvantaged youth populations, literacy, education, and youth employment. Section II focuses specifically on youth employment promotion models and presents a theoretical framework for better understanding this aspect of youth development. Section III builds upon the World Bank Youth Employment Inventory dataset to explore which categories of YEP interventions are best represented globally and which regions have the highest concentration of YEP interventions, and identifies gaps in YEP programming across regions. Section IV concludes by integrating the status of youth today with the identified gaps in YEP programming to provide strategic findings and recommendations for moving youth development forward.