Trends in the Youth Labour Market in Developing and Transition Countries

This paper looks at youth labour market trends concentrating on developing and transition countries. Questions relating to the integration of young people into decent work have in recent times once again begun to occupy a central position in Government Policy issues. Recently co-ordinated efforts also at the international level have begun to make themselves felt. In particular, on the initiative of Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, the Youth Employment Network (YEN) was established. This is a joint effort of the United nations, the World Bank and the ILO and has provided a focus for the work of these organisations on problems related to youth employment and unemployment. This paper aims to provide a contribution to debate on the issues by giving an overview of trends in the youth labour market, principally in Transition and developing countries. After giving an outline of the paper, some basic definitional issues are dealt with. In section two, the paper then looks at long-run trends in some broad aggregates relevant to youth labour markets. The section discusses long-run movements in population and population share, labour force and labour force participation, education and child labour. The third section then considers labour market outcomes. The discussion centres on which and whose outcomes are appropriate to examine as well as their determinants. The fourth, concluding section draws out some of the implications of the preceding analysis for policy, research and data collection purposes.