ILO报告：全球青年失业率回升，NEET率创纪录

If you're a young person who's been struggling to find a job recently, you're far from alone. In fact, youth unemployment has worsened virtually worldwide over the past few years. A new report published last week by the UN's International Labour Organization or ILO found that global youth unemployment is rising again after reaching its lowest level in more than two decades following the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving millions unable to find those crucial early jobs.

So, in this video, we're going to explain the global youth unemployment crisis, taking a closer look at why it's on the rise and whether things could improve.

[music]

For the latest issue of our magazine Too Long, we interviewed The Economist's new Washington bureau chief, Shashank Joshi, all about what he says has left Donald Trump bruised, weakened, and humiliated. That's just one of the articles in our longest issue ever. Subscribe to get your copy by clicking the link in the description. Let's first start with some definitions and data. The unemployment rate counts people who don't have a job but are actively looking for one.

The ILO reports found that around 67 million young people, that's those from age 15 to 24, are unemployed worldwide, equivalent to 12.4%. In 2023, that figure stood at 12.3%. So, we've seen an increase of 2 million more young people facing unemployment in the past 2 years. It's important to note that the youth unemployment rate is good at measuring how many people are ready and available to work and have not yet found a job.

But, that means it misses the full picture. It doesn't, for example, account for those who have stopped searching for a job either because they've grown frustrated with the application process or lost faith in the job market. This is where the NEET rate comes in, which includes young people who are neither employed nor in education or training and accounts for those who are no longer actively job hunting. This rate is also going in the wrong direction, increasing by 9 million to reach 257 million, about 1 in 4 young people.

This new data is noteworthy because in 2023, youth unemployment and NEET rates had hit their lowest point in 20 years, having recovered dramatically from the very high levels seen during the pandemic. What this report is essentially saying is that the post-pandemic recovery has ended and things are now worsening in most regions in the world. With the biggest increases in youth unemployment being in North Africa, North America, and North, South, and Western Europe.

Interestingly, while youth unemployment rose, the overall unemployment rate actually declined slightly, meaning a young person is now four times more likely to be unemployed than an adult age 25 or over. So, let's now try to understand why conditions are so tough for young people. To do so, we're going to look at three factors: the economy, so-called experienced inflation, and the continued rise of AI. Let's begin with the economy, specifically ongoing