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Youth Unemployment & Entrepreneurship

Work is an important part of every person’s life; it defines who we are and without work we often feel socially excluded. For young people, finding a stable job position is also a symbol that marks the transition from childhood to adulthood. In finding employment, young people find independence and a freedom of choice about their lives. It gives them a certain degree of economic security that is often a prerequisite for partnership formation and parenthood.

The creation of sustainable livelihoods has become an important factor in this era of globalization to understand the progress of a nation, especially in developing countries and among disadvantaged populations. Sustaining the progress calls for an explicit consideration of future generations. Youth will inherit many of the environmental, economic and social problems created over the past decades and incorporating their opinions and concerns into policies at all levels is critical for a country’s progress.

Youth unemployment is an acute problem in many nations. This is primarily owing to the unequal economic growth and formal job growth and secondly, the mismatch in skills between those demanded by employers and those acquired in school. More "enlightened" societies in developing countries are aware of the problems but become frustrated in their individual attempts to solve these problems.

The capacity of leaders to address the issue of Sustainable Livelihood Generation is of great importance. It is essential to weave the process of judgment, career focus, tolerance and being receptive to ideas into the fabric of learning. These qualities are essential for the holistic development of an individual and also for churning out visionary leaders who are the need of the hour for sustaining the developmental process.

The essentials for generating sustainable livelihoods are ‘adaptability’ and ‘dynamic livelihood capability’. It is thus desired to improve the effectiveness of the non-formal training system in order to mediate the lateral potential of young people into productive social and economic activity, while sensitizing itself to their current livelihood conditions and capabilities.

Self-employment, entrepreneurship, school to work programs and work-based training should be promoted. Partnerships with the private sector need to be strengthened and the use of new ICTs to support youth employment and training must be encouraged. The youth themselves must be empowered to generate the solutions to youth employment and the same should be aimed at all levels to support further replication of such initiatives from the grassroots to the global level.

‘Sustainable Livelihood Generation’ at the citizen's level across the globe is essential especially in the developing countries for continued growth and progress along with the protection against exploitation of irreplaceable global resources. Developing countries, mired in internal political, social and economical struggles, can't afford to add Livelihood Generation to their problems, especially because of a lack of access to relevant information and support mechanisms.

Not being able to find work at all is not the only problem that young people face, though. Youth in both developing and industrialized regions are also more likely to be working long hours, on short-term or informal contracts, with low pay and little or no social protection.

In 2003, 88 million young people worldwide were without work, making up almost half of the world’s unemployed. Given these devastating figures, youth employment has gained the attention of international policy makers. At the Millennium Summit in 2000, world leaders agreed to set up the Youth Employment Network (a high-level policy network on youth employment) and following the summit, the goal to “develop and implement strategies that give young people everywhere a real chance to find decent and productive work” became a target under the MDG framework.

Source:http://issues.tigweb.org/unemployment?gclid=CIywabLuJoCFZcwpAodgiNhbg