Youth unemployment rate in Latin America rose to 24% in the first quarter of the year

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The average rate of youth unemployment in Latin America and the Caribbean reached in the first quarter the highest level since records have been kept, reaching 23.8%, which implies that between 2 and 3 million young people were left out of the labor force due to the lack of opportunities because of the pandemic.

This was revealed Thursday by the International Labor Organization (ILO) director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Vinícius Pinheiro, on International Youth Day.

Pinheiro detailed in a press release that the 23.8% youth unemployment rate in the region represents an increase of 3 percentage points compared to the level registered before the arrival of the coronavirus.

At the same time, the labor participation rate of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 fell by nearly 3 percentage points to 45.6% in the first three months of 2021.

“GENERATION OF CONFINEMENT”

Given this situation, the ILO director for Latin America and the Caribbean warned of the “urgent challenge” for the countries of the region to take measures to defuse the “time bomb” represented by the legacy of high unemployment, informality, and lack of opportunities for young people being left by the covid-19 crisis.

“The young population is among those who suffer most intensely from the social and economic consequences of the pandemic in the region, and they will face the effects of the pandemic in the coming years of their working lives, running the risk of becoming a generation of confinement,” said Pinheiro.

He noted that this generation had experienced the impacts of the pandemic through “a multiplicity of channels, such as the interruption of their educational or training programs and bridging to the labor market, loss of employment and income, and the prospect of facing greater difficulties in finding a job in the future.”

INFORMALITY AND PROTESTS

In the communiqué, Pinheiro also predicted that “even if the demand for employment begins to show a more favorable behavior due to greater economic dynamism, employment opportunities for young people will continue to be very restricted”.

In addition, “the already high incidence of informality among these workers, which affected six out of every ten young people before the pandemic, is in danger of increasing even more”.

In this regard, he said that it would be necessary for the region’s countries to have strategies specifically designed to address this “structural and complex” problem, with policies aimed at increasing the labor supply and stimulating the hiring of young people.

Pinheiro added that, beyond the effects on the labor trajectory of this generation, the lack of youth employment opportunities is also “a source of discouragement and frustration, which can lead to conflictive situations and even affect governance at various levels”.

“The protests that had emerged in various countries in this region before the pandemic was led by young people. After a fierce crisis that has left many people without hope, we have already seen how in some countries these young people are once again coming out to demand a future,” he said.