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Youth unemployment
across the world has climbed to a new high and is likely to climb
further this year, a United Nations agency said Thursday, while warning
of a lost generation as more young people give up the search for work.

The agency, the
International Labour Organisation, said in a report that of some 620
million young people ages 15 to 24 in the work force, about 81 million
were unemployed at the end of 2009 the highest level in two decades of
record-keeping by the organisation, which is based in Geneva,
Switzerland.

The youth unemployment rate increased to 13 per cent in 2009 from 11.9 per cent in the last assessment in 2007.

There’s never been
an increase of this magnitude both in terms of the rate and the level
since we’ve been tracking the data, said Steven Kapsos, an economist
with the organisation. The agency forecast that the global youth
unemployment rate would continue to increase through 2010, to 13.1 per
cent, as the effects of the economic downturn continue. It should then
decline to 12.7 percent in 2011.

The agency’s 2010
report found that unemployment had hit young people harder than adults
during the financial crisis, from which most economies are only just
emerging, and that recovery of the job market for young men and women
would lag behind that of adults. The impact of the crisis also has been
felt in shorter hours and reduced wages for those who maintain salaried
employment.

In some especially
strained European countries, including Spain and Britain, many young
people have become discouraged and given up the job hunt, it said.

The trend will have
significant consequences for young people, as more and more join the
ranks of the already unemployed, it said. That has the potential to
create a lost generation comprised of young people who have dropped out
of the labor market, having lost all hope of being able to work for a
decent living.

The report said that young people in developing economies were more vulnerable to precarious employment and poverty.

About 152 million
young people, or a quarter of all the young workers in the world, were
employed but remained in extreme poverty in households surviving on
less than $1.25 a person a day in 2008, the report said.

The number of young
people stuck in working poverty grows, and the cycle of working poverty
persists, the agency’s director-general, Juan Somavia, said.

Young women still
have more difficulty than young men in finding work, the report added.
The female youth unemployment rate in 2009 stood at 13.2 percent,
compared with the male rate of 12.9 percent. The gap of 0.3 percentage
point was the same as in 2007.

The report studied
the German, British, Spanish and Estonian labor markets and found that
Germany had been most successful in bringing down long-term youth
unemployment. In Spain and Britain, increases in unemployment were
particularly pronounced for those with lower education levels.

Data from Eurostat,
the European Union’s statistical agency, showed that Spain had a
jobless rate of 40.5 percent in May for people younger than 25.

That was the
highest level among the 27 members of the European Union, far greater
than the 9.4 percent in Germany in May and 19.7 percent in Britain in
March.

New York Times