The global labour market and youth employment were the major themes of a seminar held in Hanoi on November 29 by the Vietnam Development Information Center (VDIC), World Bank (WB).
José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, ILO Executive Director for Employment touched upon global employment challenges, saying that the world is likely to see a worse employment outlook in 2012 and 2013, with an estimated unemployment rising by over 6 percent.
About 90 percent of over 1.2 billion people aged between 15 and 24 (or 17 percent of the world’s population) are living in developing countries, more than 55 percent of them in Asia.
There is a serious youth employment crisis with 75 million young people currently unemployed worldwide, Xirinachs warned.He said that unemployment varies from region to region with Southeast Asia having a lower rate than the European Union and Latin America in the 2008-2012 period.
According the ILO Executive Director, unemployment rates have been declining gradually in the US and Japan, but rising in Europe, especially since the second half of 2011.
He raised concerns over youth unemployment rates, citing that there were 22.9 million fewer employed youth in 2012 than in 2007.
He also predicted that energy-efficiency and green growth models are transforming production and labour market, creating opportunities for the youths to get steady jobs but requiring them to train hard to meet marker needs.
Prof. Keijiro Otsuka from Japan National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies said that substantial job creation is needed to cope with population growth.
The ongoing Euro debt crisis has weakened the global economy and many firms have reduced employment without offering new jobs, he noted.
In his view, jobs and incomes of low-skilled workers are declining in developed countries because low-skilled tasks are outsourced to developing countries, resulting in a wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers in both developed and developing nations.
Otsuka suggested educational reforms to reduce job mismatches in the manufacturing and service sectors which are experiencing rapid growth.
Vietnam has taken measures to lower unemployment rate, especially among the youth. According to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), more than 8 million jobs have been created since 2006, about 40 percent for young workers.
However, the number of unemployed youth remains high, accounting for 51 percent of the country’s total unemployment rate. It’s worth noting that the unemployment rate among female workers is much higher than males.
