Helping young people into jobs
At the September 2009 meeting of OECD employment ministers in Paris, the jobs crisis and the issue of youth unemployment were high on the agenda.
"Helping Youth to Get a Firm Foothold in the Labour Market" was a paper tabled for discussion. This report predicted that new entrants would be competing with a growing number of jobseekers for fewer job vacancies, at least in the short-term, and noted that employers were becoming very selective in their hiring of new staff.
But even for those youth already in the labour market but holding temporary jobs, the report predicted that the short-term outlook for young workers was grim: they tended to be the first to lose their job and might find it particularly difficult to get another one.
The report's recommendations for action include:
- Short-term priority should be to introduce measures that target youth most at risk of losing contact with the labour market.
- Tackling the more structural labour market problems that were affecting the transition from school to work was equally important.
- Co-ordinated actions on multiple fronts was essential, involving the education system, the labour market and the welfare system.
