Last month, the ILO published its yearly report on Global Employment Trends for Youth 2012. This year’s report shows that the impacts of the crisis have been disproportionately severe for young people around the world, and that those in developed economies have been especially hard hit. The youth unemployment rate has remained close to the crisis peak in 2009, and medium-term projections suggest little improvement. Particularly worrisome is the increase in those youth who have withdrawn from the workforce, and in those who are neither in education nor in employment.

Since 2007 the global youth unemployment rate has started rising again. Nearly 75 million youth are unemployed around the world, an increase of more than 4 million since 2007. By 2016, the youth unemployment rate is projected to remain at the same high level.

Discouraged by high youth unemployment rates, many young people have given up the job search altogether, or decided to postpone it and continue their stay in the education system.

In developed economies, youth are increasingly employed in non-standard jobs and the transition to decent work continues to be postponed. The growth of temporary employment and part-time work in the past decade, in particular since the global economic crisis suggests that this work is increasingly taken up because it is the only option available. For example, in the European Union youth part-time employment as well as youth temporary employment has grown faster than adult part-time and temporary employment both before and during the economic crisis.

Young people that are neither in employment nor in education (NEET) have become a serious concern for policy-makers, in particular in developed economies. Many countries have introduced policies to tackle this phenomenon, targeting specific subgroups of the NEET such as school drop-outs or unemployed youth.