Introduction

Social and economic challenges facing young people today must be understood in terms of complex interactions between unique demographic trends and specific economic contexts. There has been an unprecedented growth in the number of young people in the Global South in the past two decades. The regional manifestations of this growth, however, vary considerably depending on how the forces of economic globalisation have interacted with historically determined national and regional economic structures and policies. Although we will argue that unemployment is only a partial measure of employment inadequacy for youth, especially in poor countries, the ready availability of data and its widespread use make it an important starting point. Globally, the ILO estimates that the number of unemployed youth has been declining slowly since the peak of the financial crisis in 2009. The total number was projected to be 73.4 million in 2015 (ILO, 2015, 15). The global youth unemployment rate has remained fairly steady since 2010 at about 13 per cent (ILO, 2015, 15). In contrast, the global adult unemployment rate was much lower at 4.6 per cent in 2015 (ILO, 2015).

We argue in this chapter that employment inadequacy among youth is a much broader phenomenon than youth unemployment as conventionally defined. Remaining out of work to actively search for employment is often either fruitless and/or unaffordable for many youth in developing countries, if there are few wage and salary jobs to be had. Youth in these situations are forced to engage in any sort of livelihood activity they can muster, even if extremely marginal; or, if they can rely on their families for support, they may remain inactive after completing their schooling. Broader measures of employment inadequacy are needed to capture these two situations, but most of these measures will require new data collection practices.

One broader measure, called ‘NEET’, for ‘not in education, employment or training’, is increasingly being used to study youth employment challenges in OECD countries (OECD, 2012). While this measure does not take into account that many youth are engaged in unproductive or marginal employment, it does capture a broad category of youth for whom employment is either not an option or at least not one worth actively searching for.