Demystifying Youth Unemployment

Youth unemployment has become an ever increasing serious socio-economic problem, which deserves far more attention that it has so far received. In this article, we examine the causes of this issue. They include 1) countries losing the ability to compete effectively and therefore cannot create high-quality jobs, 2) inflexible labour markets that prevent young people from being hired, 3) many young labourers prefer not to work (hard), and 4) mismatch of skills and employers’ needs. We urge governments to take decisive and fast actions to combat this problem before it turns itself into a major crisis.