Young people follow highly different trajectories from age 16 up to age 20, a time period which is often argued to be the most critical in terms of their future labour market outcomes. The focus of this report is on investigating the look of these early pathways, as well as on exploring their link to labour market outcomes in adulthood. Results are reported and compared for four Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.

Providing original insights into the factors causing early job insecurity in European countries, this book examines its short- and long-term consequences. It assesses public policies seeking to diminish the risks to young people facing prolonged job insecurity and reduce the severity of these impacts. Based on the findings of a major study across nine European countries, this book examines the diverse strategies that countries across the continent use to help young people overcome employment barriers.

The SDN will assess the youth unemployment problem in advanced European countries, with a special focus on the euro area. It will document the main trends in youth and adult unemployment in 22 European countries before and after the global financial crisis. It will identify the main drivers of youth and adult unemployment, focusing in particular on the role of the business cycle and structural characteristics of the labor market. It will outline the main elements of a comprehensive strategy to address the problem.

This publication points the way to future initiatives to improve youth labour market and educational outcomes as identified by policy-makers and experts of OECD countries brought together at the Washington Conference "Preparing Youth for the 21st Century."

This Selected Issues chapter outlines a strategy to facilitate this and navigate the more challenging monetary environment, involving enhanced communication of policy interest rate intentions and inflation-forecast targeting. The reduction in the inflation target by a percentage point to 2 percent in January 2016 weakened the nominal anchor. Monetary policy can play a role rebuilding the credibility of the anchor more rapidly through the adoption of inflation-forecast targeting. This strengthening of the monetary policy framework involves enhancing communications. An effective, credible monetary policy cannot address all macroeconomic challenges facing Korea. Rather, it can foster robust growth with low inflation, providing a stable and predictable environment that allows other policies to work more effectively. These other policies play a complementary role. Fiscal policy can reinforce the effectiveness of monetary policy, as illustrated by model scenarios. Structural policies can also support monetary policy by, for example, boosting potential growth.

This report comments positively on some aspects of the design of the Youth Contract. It builds on the types of interventions which have been shown to have a positive impact: increased Jobcentre Plus (JCP) adviser support; work experience placements; and apprenticeships. It also welcomes the inclusion of a new scheme for 16-17 year-olds, the large majority of whom do not receive support from JCP as they are ineligible for Jobseekers Allowance (JSA). The Committee acknowledges that the Government has sensibly focused wage incentives - the key new element of the Youth Contract - on longer term young unemployed claimants and there is an attempt to achieve sustainable job outcomes by linking wage incentives to the Work Programme payment structure, in which providers are financially incentivised to keep participants in work and off benefits in the longer term. However the Youth Contract on its own it will not be enough to address the current unacceptably high level of youth unemployment. A significant impact can only be made if all the targets are met. In particular, past experience shows that 160,000 wage incentives is a very ambitious target in the current economic climate. And 250,000 additional work experience placements for young people may also be unrealistic

The unprecedented progress of East Asia Pacific is a triumph of working people. Countries that were low-income a generation ago successfully integrated into the global value chain, exploiting their labor-cost advantage. In 1990, the region held about a third of the world’s labor force. Leveraging this comparative advantage, the share of global GDP of emerging economies in East Asia Pacific grew from 7 percent in 1992 to 17 percent in 2011. Yet, the region now finds itself at a critical juncture. Work and its contribution to growth and well-being can no longer be taken for granted. The challenges range from high youth inactivity and rising inequality to binding skills shortages. A key underlying issue is economic informality, which constrains innovation and productivity, limits the tax base, and increases household vulnerability to shocks. Informality is both a consequence of stringent labor regulations and limited enforcement capacity. In several countries, de jure employment regulations are more stringent than in many parts of Europe. Even labor regulations set at reasonable levels but poorly implemented can aggravate the market failures they were designed to overcome. This report argues that the appropriate policy responses are to ensure macroeconomic stability, and in particular, a regulatory framework that encourages small- and medium-sized enterprises where most people in the region work. Mainly agrarian countries should focus on raising agricultural productivity. In urbanizing countries, good urban planning becomes critical. Pacific island countries will need to provide youth with human capital needed to succeed abroad as migrant workers. And, across the region, it is critical to ‘formalize’ more work, to increase the coverage of essential social protection, and to sustain productivity. To this end, policies should encourage mobility of labor and human capital, and not favor some forms of employment - for instance, full-time wage employment in manufacturing - over others, either implicitly or explicitly. Policies to increase growth and well-being from employment should instead reflect and support the dynamism and diversity of work forms across the region.

With contributions from leading experts in the field, this book presents the findings of the first comparative study of unemployed youth in Europe.

Since the economic and financial crisis of 2008, the proportion of unemployed young people has exceeded any other group of unemployed adults. This phenomenon marks the emergence of a laborscape. This concept recognizes that, although youth unemployment is not consistent across the world, it is a coherent problem in the global political economy. This book examines this crisis of youth unemployment, drawing on international case studies. It is organized around four key dimensions of the crisis: precarity, flexibility, migration, and policy responses. With contributions from leading experts in the field, the chapters offer a dynamic portrait of unemployment and how this is being challenged through new modes of resistance. This book provides cross-national comparisons, both ethnographic and quantitative, to explore the contours of this laborscape on the global, national, and local scales. Throughout these varied case studies is a common narrative from young workers, families, students, volunteers, and activists facing a new and growing problem. This book will be an imperative resource for students and researchers looking at the sociology of globalization, global political economy, labor markets, and economic geography.

From an international and comparative perspective, young people’s access to the labour market is a complex issue with certain contradictory aspects reflecting the level of development of labour law and industrial relations in their respective countries. In the most advanced economies, there has been a steady increase in the age at which young people exit the educational system and enter the labour market, giving rise to significant economic and social problems. The increase in levels of educational attainment is associated in some cases with an alarming rate of unemployment among those with academic qualifications, while employers encounter considerable difficulty in recruiting workers for unskilled and semi-skilled positions. The economies of developing countries, on the other hand, are characterized by different trends, reminiscent of the early stages of modern labour law, with the large-scale exploitation of young workers and children, many of whom join the flow of migrants towards the more highly developed regions of the world, with the consequent risk of impoverishing human capital in the country of origin. The ADAPT Labour Studies Book-Series has in connection been set up with a view to achieving a better understanding of these and other issues in the field of Labour and Employment relations in a global dimension, through an interdisciplinary and comparative approach.