SHAPING THE FUTURE HOW CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS CAN POWER HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

Some barriers stand in their way, however. Not
enough decent jobs, poorly matched skills and
labour market rigidities all spur climbing rates
of youth unemployment and idleness. These
are serious concerns, as they can permanently
impair future productivity and employment. 67
Rising but unmet youth expectations can also
have long-term consequences in terms of social
cohesion and stability.
In many cases, young people do not acquire
the right skills. While highly-educated youth
fare relatively well, those with less or poorer
quality education are more likely to end up in
low-productivity, rural or informal sector work.
Overall, youth employment rates have declined
in the past two decades and are expected to continue
to fall. In 1991, about 350 million youth
across the region worked. Now only about 290
million do, out of a total of 665 million young
people (Table 3.12). In the early 1990s, one in
every four Asia-Pacific workers was a young
person—today, only one in six is.
In East Asia, the youth labour force participation
rate fell from 66 percent in 2000 to 55
percent in 2012. The drop has been slower in
South-east Asia and the Pacific, from 56 percent
to 52 percent. In South Asia, it decreased from
48 percent to 40 percent. Gender gaps have been
closing, with the biggest remaining in South
Asia. In East Asia, women work at higher rates
than men, and their work participation rate is
TABLE 3.12:
Regionally and globally, fewer youth are
in the workforce
Youth employment (millions)
Source: Based on ILO 2016.
FIGURE 3.7:
Youth unemployment rates in South and East
Asia are lower than in other regions
Source: ILO 2015f.
more than two and a half times that of women
in South Asia. 68
Lower employment and labour force participation
rates among youth may in part reflect
improved enrolment in school, but also the stark
reality that it remains difficult for young people
to find jobs. Although the youth unemployment
rate in Asia-Pacific is still somewhat low compared
to other regions (Figure 3.7), it is typically
two to three times the general unemployment
rate—and growing. 69 In East Asia, the rate increased
from 8.7 percent in 2005 to 10.5 percent
in 2014, while that of adults remained below 4
percent. Youth unemployment in South-east
Asia rose from 9.6 percent in 1996 to 13.6 percent
in 2014, even though the creation of jobs
appropriate for youth has been fairly robust. In
South Asia, youth unemployment was lower at
10 percent in 2014, but this fails to reflect the
quality of jobs. The vast majority of employment
growth there has been in vulnerable and informal
employment, such as in subsistence agriculture. 70
Youth unemployment challenges confront
countries across the region regardless of their
stage of socioeconomic development. In nearly
half of 13 economies with recent official estimates,
youth unemployment exceeded 10 percent.
In Sri Lanka, 20 percent of young people
in the labour force were unemployed in 2013;
Youth employment
rates are expected to
continue falling
101