Hundreds of millions of young people in the Global South face uncertain futures due to poor access to quality education, inadequate skills, and limited employment opportunities. By 2033, the Global South will host 1.2 billion people ages 15 to 24. However, unless current trends are reversed, only 480 million will attend school, and 420 million will have jobs (often precarious ones), leaving 300 million inactive. Youth inactivity negatively impacts lifelong opportunities, earnings, mobility, and mental health. It also erodes productivity and human capital development, hinders economic growth, and may lead to antisocial behavior and social unrest. Programs and policies that support youth entry into the labor market fall into three categories: those enhancing employment opportunities, training programs to address skills gaps, and those facilitating youth integration into the workforce. Evidence shows that proper program design and implementation are crucial for success, emphasizing the need to tailor interventions to local contexts and youth profiles. The private sector role has a critical role to play beyond job creation. The private sector should be involved in policy decisions to ensure that programs address employers' needs. Its efforts should also complement the public sector in providing quality training and employment services. When wage employment opportunities are scarce, private self-employment and small-scale entrepreneurship initiatives should also become significant pathways for youth to access the labor market. Looking ahead, successful youth employment initiatives need to be brought to scale to unleash the potential of the next generation.
The infographic highlights the growing number of young people entering the workforce and the need for labor markets to adapt to accommodate them. It also emphasizes the disproportionate impact of poor labor market conditions on youth compared to adults, and the importance of addressing this issue to ensure a sustainable future for all.
The Asante Africa Foundation's 2023 Impact Report, "Rural Youth Breaking Barriers," highlights the transformative power of education in East Africa. By providing quality education and fostering entrepreneurship and leadership, AAF's programs empowered over 24,000 youth in 2023, creating lasting change and brighter futures. They acknowledge the need for continued support in education, mentorship, and youth empowerment to build a stronger Africa.
Youth Co:Lab study on Inclusive Youth Entrepreneurship aims to provide evidence-based information on strengthening an enabling environment for young entrepreneurs from underserved communities. The study analyzes opportunities and challenges they face and explores entry points to incorporate an intersectional approach into inclusive youth entrepreneurship support programs and policies. The study covers young entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs from Asia and the Pacific from marginalized groups: women, LGBTI+, persons with disabilities, people on the move, indigenous persons and ethnic minorities, and youth.
The guide is the result of a South-South exchange between technical advisors and representatives of youth organisations from Burkina Faso, Malawi, Mozambique and Kenya. It highlights their first-hand experiences and best practices on topics like leadership transition, recruitment of new members, the inclusion of women as well as strategies for the distribution of information among members.
This Note analyzes how Generative AI (GAI) will impact jobs, using a skills-based approach to categorize occupations as augmented by GAI, disrupted by automation, or minimally affected. While GAI is expected to enhance some jobs, a troubling gender gap emerges: women are more likely to hold jobs susceptible to disruption, while men are more likely to benefit from GAI-powered augmentation. This trend suggests GAI could widen the gender gap in the job market.
The knowledge product serves as an introduction to the strategies and approaches outlined within, offering practical guidance on facilitating access to finance for project beneficiaries. Developed through a transnational thematic working group on access to finance, the guide draws from the diverse experiences of the four country packages to provide policymakers and implementing organizations with valuable insights.
This how-to paper focuses on the promotion of digitalisation within rural youth employment programmes. Digitalisation in rural contexts can be complicated and requires tailored responses to be able to support youth and women in gaining better access to knowledge, information and job opportunities. Through successful planning and implementation, digital tools can help provide these opportunities. At the same time, they create more interesting and accessible routes in discovering youths’ employment potential – both locally and globally.
The Report explores the challenges of youth unemployment for people with disabilities in South Africa. The high rate of youth unemployment is highlighted, despite employers reporting unfilled vacancies. The social model of disability is used to frame the analysis, arguing societal barriers are the main obstacle. These barriers include inaccessible workplaces and a lack of accessible education, significantly disadvantaging young people with disabilities. The report acknowledges employer challenges in finding qualified candidates. Legislative efforts to promote disability inclusion are also outlined.
In this paper, Youth Business International (YBI) and Somo, YBI’s member organisation in Kenya, shine a light on the important role of informal businesses in sub-Saharan Africa and the barriers they face that prevent them from scaling up, with a particular focus on women-led informal businesses in Kenya. It includes recommendations for governments, financial institutions, and development agencies on ways to increase access to finance for informal businesses.
This short note explains how the Biscate app addresses the challenge of connecting informal workers with local clients through a user-friendly platform that does not require internet access or smartphones. In partnership with GIZ, Biscate is expanding its reach to rural areas, enhancing job prospects for informal workers and stimulating economic growth in remote regions.
This Short Note is part of a series building on the report Working Without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work. This note aims to provide some practical tips for practitioners like World Bank task team leaders in implementing online gig work programs to enable vulnerable populations - such as youth, women, persons with disabilities - to access online gig jobs to support their social and economic inclusion. Governments can use the potential of online gig work to build human capital, develop the nation’s digital skills, and provide opportunities to supplement household income.
This Short Note is part of a series building on the report Working Without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work. This short note is based on a survey conducted in one of the largest microwork platforms and supplemented by data scraping from the same platform. Using descriptive statistics, network analysis, constrained linear optimization, linear regressions, and case studies, the note attempts to shed light on the world of microwork, which presents a low entry barrier opportunity for low-skilled people to supplement their incomes and participate in the digital economy. Microworkers are more likely to be young, male, possessing a range of skills, and residing outside capital cities.
This Short Note is part of a series building on the report Working without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work. flexibility of working hours and location associated with online gig work uniquely positions it as an avenue to boost female labor force participation, especially in regions with limited local job opportunities. This short note takes a deep dive into gender-based disparities in access to these new forms of work, especially asking whether there is a gender gap in hourly rates that online gig workers ask for and earn from online tasks. The analysis uses data from over 19,000 profiles on one of the largest English-language freelancing platforms. Data from one of the largest global freelancing platforms shows that women quote approximately 10 percent lower hourly rates than men, likely reflecting a difference in confidence.
This S4YE Note analyzes the importance of the fashion industry for socio-economic growth and examines its potential as a source of job opportunities for young people. It discusses jobs along the industry’s value chain, its contribution to global revenues and trade, and its evolution with changes in technology, environmental concerns, and changing consumption patterns. The note also highlights the skills required for jobs in the fashion industry and presents analysis to support the claim that the industry is a key driver of jobs for youth and women. The note concludes with policy recommendations to promote circular economy job creation, skill development of young talent, and investment in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the fashion industry.
The report reveals a complex global employment scenario. It forecasts a slight increase in global unemployment in 2024, signalling emerging labour market challenges. The report highlights disparities between high and low-income countries, noting higher unemployment and poverty rates in lower-income nations. It also points out that a significant portion of the global workforce remains in informal employment.
This document outlines how Duolingo is utilizing AI to support education for refugees.
This paper assesses the reliability and validity of cognitive and socioemotional skills measures and investigates the correlation between schooling, skills acquisition, and labor earnings. The primary data from Pakistan incorporates two innovations related to measurement and sampling. On measurement, the paper develops and implements a battery of instruments intended to capture cognitive and socioemotional skills among young adults. On sampling, the paper uses a panel that follows respondents from their original rural locations in 2003 to their residences in 2018, a period over which 38 percent of the respondents left their native villages. In terms of their validity and reliability, our skills measures compare favorably to previous measurement attempts in low- and middle-income countries. The following are documented in the data: (a) more years of schooling are correlated with higher cognitive and socioemotional skills; (b) labor earnings are correlated with cognitive and socioemotional skills as well as years of schooling; and (c) the earnings-skills correlations depend on respondents’ migration status. The magnitudes of the correlations between schooling and skills on the one hand and earnings and skills on the other are consistent with a widespread concern that such skills are underproduced in the schooling system.
This policy review considers the opportunities e-commerce offers to women-led and womenowned small enterprises in developing and least developed countries (LDCs), and the challenges such enterprises face to engage in e-commerce. While a vast literature is available on e-commerce and UNCTAD has contributed to it, looking at e-commerce through a gender lens is a more recent endeavour. This publication aims to contribute to it. It is addressed to a variety of stakeholders, but especially to policymakers, with the aim of providing guidance on how to design policies and measures that enhance women’s beneficial participation in the economy by leveraging e-commerce. Nevertheless, private sector stakeholders are encouraged to examine the findings of this policy review to determine opportunities for collaboration with government, including through public-private partnerships.
The ILO and Learning Lions are bridging the digital divide in remote areas by providing comprehensive digital skills training, mentorship and job opportunities to young people. This innovative program is transforming the lives of vulnerable communities, including refugees, and paving the way for an inclusive digital economy in Kenya.
