THE GLOBAL YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT CRISIS Stefan Kapferer Deputy Secretary General OECD October 6th 2015

Youth unemployment reached very high levels in some OECD countries and has not fully recovered Youth (15-24) unemployment rate, December 2007 a - January 2015 b Note: Countries shown in ascending order of the unemployment rates at their peak. a) Q for Switzerland and Q for Israel and New Zealand. b) November 2014 for Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom, December 2014 for Chile, Estonia, Hungary, Norway and Slovenia, February 2015 for Canada and the United States, and Q for New Zealand and Switzerland. Source: OECD calculations based on the OECD Short-Term Labour Market Statistics (database),

Unemployment is only part of the problem - NEET rates have increased from 2007 to 2013 … and over half of all NEETs are not looking for a job NEET Rate 2013 Change in NEET Rate

80% of NEETs do not have higher education and 40% only have lower secondary education Two thirds of NEETs have low/very low cognitive skills 2 times as likely to be lone parent More likely to have parents with lower educational attainment NEET status is not temporary – 1 in 4 of youth with NEET spell > 1 year What they think (compared to non-NEET youth) 30% less likely to trust other people twice as likely to show no interest at all in politics less likely to value work (depending on country) Portrait of a NEET

 Early interventions to prevent school drop-outs  Innovative school programmes  After-school support & activities  High quality apprenticeships & Vocational Educational Training (VET)  Mentoring & early career guidance  Youth Guarantees for those out of school  Allows identifying human capital deficits and specific interventions  Helps prevent youth inactivity and permanent scarring  Ensures that youth are work-ready when job creation resumes  Challenge when unemployment is high; can be difficult to scale up Strategies

Advantages: Will help align skill needs with skills taught Facilitates recruitment as employers and potential employees can get to know each other Can be attractive to students who are at risk of dropping out of school or not progressing on to 3 rd level education Allow the combining of work & study – students can gain labour market experience Recipe for success: Ensure access to high quality programmes Need to be attractive to students and employers Apprenticeships & VET

Focus mainly on the difficult groups which may vary across countries. 1.Identify with more precision the risk factors, needs and barriers to training and labour market pathways for these groups 2.Map existing policies: income-support but also housing, health, education, counselling/mentoring, mobility and special training / work experience programmes 3.Evaluate how these policies help reduce high-school drop out rates and improve successful participation in vocational training and apprenticeship programmes Latvia completed. Australia, Norway, Sweden, Japan ongoing More countries expected in 2016 New country reviews INVESTING IN YOUTH