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The youth employment crisis is easing, at least in terms of global trends…

After the period of rapid increase between 2007 and 2010, the global youth unemployment rate settled at 13.0 per cent for the period 2012 to 2014. At the same time, the number of unemployed youth declined by 3.3 million from the crisis peak: 76.6 million youth were unemployed in 2009 compared to an estimated 73.3 million in 2014.

The economic crisis in the European Union has dramatically changed the youth labour market to a degree that in almost all European countries, several years since the start of the crisis, young people are still facing unprecedented difficulties in finding a job. While youth unemployment was already quite high in 2011, during the following two years the situation deteriorated even further in most countries, with eleven of these registering their highest youth unemployment rate for the 15-24 age group either in 2012 or in 2013 (60).

The United Nations Population Fund reports that there are 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24, with 89 percent of them residing in less-developed countries (2014). In Sub-Saharan Africa, minors often account for more than 50 percent of a country’s population.

Moreover, by 2050, the world’s population will increase by 2 billion, an increase of 28 percent, all of whom will require access to health and education services, and eventually to jobs and self-employment opportunities.

Vocational education and training (VET) can play a central role in preparing young people for work, developing adults’ skills and responding to labour-market needs of the economy. However, VET has been neglected in the past an marginalized in policy discussions, often overshadowed by the increasing emphasis on general academic education. Nevertheless, more recently, an increasing number of countries are recognizing that high quality vocational education and training have a major contribution to make to economic competitiveness.