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Consequences of increasing youth unemployment rate
The International Labour Organization (ILO) recently launched a new report on global youth unemployment
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he International Labour Organization (ILO) recently launched a new report on global youth unemployment. The ILO reported that the global unemployment rate for young people had risen to its highest recorded level, and is expected to continue increasing at least until the end of this year. At the end of 2009, across the world, unemployment among young people (aged between 15 and 24) stood at 13 percent or approximately 81 million people.
This is an increase of 7.8 million since 2007, prior to the global crisis. In the Asia-Pacific region, home to 56 percent (or approximately 350 million people) of the global economically active youth population (of 620 million), there are 36.4 million unemployed young people. More specifically, 8.3 million young people were affected by unemployment in Southeast Asia.
Meanwhile, the Indonesia’s Central Statistics Agency has reported that the number of registered unemployed in the country in 2009 reached 8.96 million people out of a workforce of 113.83 million, of which many were young people aged between 15 and 24. For sure, this data is alarming as the serious psychological, social, economic and health consequences of unemployment among youth are well documented.
In addition, numerous studies revealed that unemployment causes psychological and health problems. Unemployment should also be considered not merely as a deprivation of income but also a deprivation of dignity.
Out-of-work people are highly likely to suffer from deprivation of “manifest functions”, or the direct benefits of employment, i.e. legitimate and regular income, but also deprivation of “latent functions”, or indirect benefits of work such as engaging in meaningful activities, a structured life, respect from the community as well as from wider social networks.
Such deprivation may generate depression, disillusionment and isolation and therefore could trigger or aggravate psychological and physical problems.
Furthermore, studies have documented the association between unemployment, boredom, disenchantment and rampant engagement in risk-taking practices such as engagement in violence and excessive alcohol or drugs use among young men aged between 15 and 24 particularly those who live in low-income neighborhoods.
It should also be noted that direct and indirect benefits of employment have been identified as protective factors from heavy involvement in these risk-taking behaviors that may have serious consequences for health and wellbeing.
Additionally, unemployment among young people in poor urban neighborhoods is closely related to involvement in various forms of offenses, including expressive and acquisitive offenses such as vandalism, petty crimes or more serious crimes such as burglary and robbery. Off course, the association of youth unemployment and crime are not causal and mechanistic — not all unemployed young people will automatically engage in these activities.
However, unemployment evidently plays a pivotal role in exacerbating young people’s vulnerabilities and susceptibilities to becoming involved in such activities.
It is therefore important particularly for the government (at all levels) to provide a supportive environment for economic growth, particularly the growth of the real sector, that has a great potential to absorb youth into the workforce.
It is also essential for the government (at all levels) to review their hostile policies toward the informal sector that play a key role in providing employment among young people with limited educational attainment and economic capital.
Studies have shown that hostile policies toward the informal sector exacerbate the suffering and marginalization of the urban poor. The experience of Joko Widodo, the mayor of Surakarta (Solo) in Central Java in better managing the informal sector is instructive.
Surakarta’s experience has demonstrated that by carefully listening to people working in the informal economy and by better understanding the nature of work in the informal sector, a balance between the need to protect people’s access to employment and the need to promote economic growth and enhance public spaces in the city can be achieved. It is noteworthy that citizens’ rights to decent employment are clearly stated within the Indonesian Constitution.
For sure, considering the large number of Indonesian young people, it will take time to increase young people’s access to decent employment but it is not impossible either. After all, the costs and the dramatic human suffering caused by ignoring and doing nothing to reduce unemployment among poor young people are clearly too high.
The writer, a lecturer at the Faculty of Public Health at Hasanuddin University in Makassar, is a PhD candidate at the Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne.
