UNEMPLOYMENT

The Digital Jobs: Building Skills for the Future report introduces a new initiative of the Rockefeller Foundation, Digital Jobs Africa. The initiative will support youth with limited employment opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa and MENA to access digital job opportunities, "while building and refining transferable skills that make them resilient in the future economy." 

This call for action and resolution issued by the ILO succinctly states the dire circumstances facing global youth. Noting that nearly 75 million young people are out of work, 6 million gave up looking for work, and recognizing the long-term effects of youth unemployment and underemployment, the ILO issued this call for action in 2012.

This case study details a large part of SPARK’s work in the Western Balkans during the years 2006-2010. SPARK is a young, enthusiastic development organisation focusing on building the capacity of partner organisations in fragile states so they can develop entrepreneurship amongst youth. This should lead to new enterprises and growth of existing enterprises. In five countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro) SPARK has set up Business Start-up Centres (BSCs) with the aid of local civil society stakeholders such as municipalities, universities, chambers of commerce, business associations and other relevant parties. More than 10,000 youth followed business skills training, ranging from administrative courses to business plan writing, leading to improvaed participant business skills. Read the case study to discover the key lessons learned. 

Five years after the outbreak of the global financial crisis, the study offers the latest global and regional information and projections on several indicators of the labour market, including employment, unemployment, working poverty and vulnerable employment. It also presents a number of policy considerations in light of the new challenges facing policy makers in the coming year.