More jobs, please

Youth unemployment is a global problem, but increased engagement between education providers and the private sector could provide for greater opportunities.

Young people have fresh ideas, enthusiasm, and are willing to be taught.

They are largely free to go places and meet people, network and learn. Whatever it may be, youthful exuberance makes a day’s work a rewarding and positive experience.

Yet the grim reality worldwide for Generation Y – a generation exponentially interconnected, educated and at the forefront of the digital age – is that there just aren’t the jobs to get one’s foot in the door.

If political priority is any reflection on the concerns of society, then the sheer number of panel sessions, lunch debates and keynote speeches dedicated to youth unemployment at this year’s OECD Forum (titled “Jobs, Equality, Trust”) points to a systemic social plague that governments are scrambling to cure.

The 2012 International Labour Organisation (ILO) forecast of 46 per cent youth unemployment across Spain articulates that country’s currently macabre economic woes. A recent IMF report warns of more civil unrest across much of the Middle East if the growing number of unemployed and disenfranchised youth is not mitigated.

Closer to home, Australia’s increasing all-age unemployment level (as of April 2013, at a three-year high of 5.6 per cent) is not as dire as those of Spain, Greece or Tunisia. But this figure masks a much higher percentage of unemployed Australian youth (11.9 per cent), and - more worryingly - unemployment amongst Australian teenagers aged between 15-19 (26.3 per cent).

In fact, certain trends in Australia’s youth unemployment are mirrors of the social constructs and issues felt globally. On one side of the spectrum, there is a higher incidence of unemployment among youth from indigenous, migrant and low socioeconomic backgrounds. The Work Foundation recently concluded that this rather eclectic group of marginalised youths is lacking in even the most fundamental literacy and numeracy skills, leading to their overall disengagement with the labour market. Whilst the social factors may differ, unskilled youths with little prospect of re-emergence into the labour market - or the “Youth Left Behind”, according to the OECD - are of increasing concern to Turkey, Mexico and Italy.

On the other hand, the increasing number of enrolments in Australian universities and vocational trade centres is not indicative of industry demand. According to the OECD, already more than 40 per cent of Australians are overqualified for their current job. Such instances of skills mismatch present yet another conundrum in the youth unemployment crisis: the qualifications obtained by youth are not being adequately transformed into jobs. Even in the rapidly expanding Chinese economy, close to 30 per cent of university graduates face difficulties in securing their first full-time job.

Solutions to youth unemployment in Spain, Algeria or Australia lie in engaging with the private sector, and it is unreasonable to ask governments to bear the total burden of such an immense issue.

If qualifications are going to translate into jobs, businesses must take part in the education process. There should be an early presentation by business of what it considers valuable, and an earlier opportunity for young people to measure their own interests and aptitudes against tasks ‘in demand’.

Germany’s vocational education system contains the best of both worlds. It allows young people to complete both secondary schooling and a trade, which sees business engaged in curriculum development, subsidising apprenticeship contracts and even conducting in-house training.

Australia may boast of similar rapport between business and education providers, but unlike the German system we do not have a separate stream of vocational training that also provides basic literacy and numeracy skills, ensuring that the most marginalised groups are not left behind in the job market.

It is in the interest of businesses to promote vocational education and trades as an alternative stepping-stone to academia. South Korea’s ‘meister (master) schools’ of vocational education aim to redress the privileging of academia in a competitive graduate market by recognising ‘meister certificates’ as ‘prerequisites’ to owning a company licence. Such apprenticeships are an alternate entry path to engineering, mathematics or science-specific firms.

In contrast to businesses, entrepreneurs are seeing value in tapping into an educated generation yet to fulfil its role within the labour market. AcademyCube, a private Dutch enterprise, offers online courses developed in collaboration with firms such as Microsoft that provide mathematics, science and engineering graduates with industry-specific knowledge to help them upgrade their qualifications to the needs of markets with skills shortages.

There is an opportunity for businesses to tap into an increasingly mobile and optimistic generation of innovators and entrepreneurs who, given the necessary capital, can create their own jobs.

This idea is not restricted to high-tech start-ups such as Facebook or Google. Small and medium enterprises, often connected to industrial labour and agriculture, form the backbone of employment in many developing countries. An IMF report into the youth unemployment crisis across the Middle East recently recommended the provision of credit guarantees to small and medium enterprises.

Investment in unemployed young people is a chance to harness the skills and willingness of a considerable workforce, and an opportunity to profit from new and innovative ventures. It is also a chance to rewrite an otherwise troubled and melancholic period of history into the hope and opportunity so desperately wanted by millions of unemployed youths and the societies that must otherwise deal with their fulminating frustration.

Young people need business; businesses need young people.