Youth Unemployment Up in Southeast Asia

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- The number of young people unemployed in developing countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific has shot up 85.5 percent in the last decade since 1995, leaving 9.5 million youths between the ages of 15 and 24 out of work, a report released Monday by the U.N.'s International Labor Organization said.

The increase vastly outpaced the global average increase of 14.8 percent. Worldwide, some 85 million young people are unemployed, according to the Global Employment Trends for Youth 2006.

In Southeast Asia and the Pacific, youth unemployment was 15.8 percent in 2005; while in South Asia it touched 10 percent -- representing 13.7 million young men and women. In East Asia excluding Japan, where youth unemployment decreased to 12 million from 13.1 million between 1995 and 2005, it was 7.8 percent, according to the report.

The global youth work force is expected to grow by another 24 million by 2015, with nearly half, or 11 million, in Southeast Asia and the Pacific alone, it said.

The region includes Southeast Asian countries and island states and territories in the Pacific, but does not include the developed economies of Australia and New Zealand.

The report warned that youth unemployment is costly in both social and economic terms, as the inability to find work creates a sense of vulnerability, redundancy and discouragement. These social problems can lead to crime and drugs, which is costly for the state to combat. National economies lose out with reduced savings, demand and investment, it said.

The report said that even among young people with jobs, low incomes are a problem, though working poverty has decreased in East Asia and the Southeast Asia-Pacific region. Throughout Asia, agriculture continued to be the largest employment sector.

The income shortfall was severe in South Asia, where four out of 10 young working people earned less than $1 a day, and only one in 10 earned enough to raise their families above the $2 per day poverty line, the report said.

On the Net:

International Labor Organization:

http://www.ilo.org/trends

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