|
While few dispute that the principal economic challenge facing the Arab region is to generate jobs for the large numbers of youth entering the labour force, devising workable policies to confront that challenge is proving difficult and complex.
Programmes to boost youth employment have suffered from poor co-ordination between agencies and have had only limited impact, according to the International Labour Organisation which reviewed what is being done in six GCC states. "Governments recognise the critical youth employment challenge that their societies are facing," says Nada Al Nashif, director of the ILO's regional office for Arab states in Beirut. "But no country has yet fully implemented a comprehensive and integrated approach to the problem."
The sheer size of the task is daunting. The World Bank estimated last year that the Middle East and North African region would need to create 54 million jobs over the next 15 years just to cover new entrants to the labour market.
Making a dent in high youth unemployment rates - now averaging about 25 per cent - would mean generating 68 million jobs by 2020. Even this would still leave the proportion of young people in paid work in the region among the lowest in the world. Currently, only one in three young people of working age is employed, compared with one in two worldwide. For young women the ratio is just one in five.
Although the influx of young workers into the labour force is peaking in some countries, ILO projections suggest the youth share of the region's working-age population will still be above a quarter in 2015, second only to sub-Saharan Africa.
Moreover, the employment problems of young people do not begin and end with a shortage of jobs. Oil-producing countries have been generating new jobs at an unprecedented rate in the past few years on the back of high oil prices. But the bulk of them, many in construction, have gone to expatriate workers rather than nationals.
Study
Bahrain has created 84,000 new private sector jobs since 1990 but 58,000 of these have gone to foreigners, the ILO study notes. And the region has struggled to produce what the ILO likes to call "decent work" for its young people. Many of the new jobs created are temporary and informal, which the ILO attributes in part to inflexible labour legislation on hiring and firing and high social insurance costs.
The problems are compounded by a general disdain in the region for manual work and a tradition in many countries of providing secure, well-paid jobs in the public sector for educated young people.
Though the public sector is no longer expanding, the majority of youth still appear to hanker after a government job and those that can afford it are prepared to remain unemployed for long periods in the hope of a vacancy turning up.
In Syria, for instance, more than 80 per cent of unemployed youth aged 15-29 were looking for public sector jobs in 2003 and 60 per cent said they were not looking elsewhere.
For women the figures were even higher, with 90 per cent seeking work in the public sector, 70 per cent exclusively so.
The ILO points out that for women a government job (in education, health or the civil service) has often been the only source of paid employment in societies that still severely limit their work opportunities.
The scarcity of public sector jobs has thus led to a rise in unemployment among graduates, especially women. In Morocco the unemployment rate for graduates is four times that for non-graduates and in Tunisia a World Bank survey found that more than a third of graduates were unemployed 18 months after graduation.
Unprepared
One recommendation emerging from the six ILO country studies was the need to change young people's "mindset", to encourage them to consider jobs in the private sector as well as the possibility of creating their own business.
But the studies also found that youth was not being equipped with the technical skills demanded by private employers, who often preferred to hire cheaper expatriates with better skills. This has proved an additional disadvantage for women, who make up a high proportion of humanities graduates.
The ILO is urging improvements in both basic and vocational education and training, a more co-ordinated institutional approach, legislative and other changes to encourage more "decent" jobs in the private sector, and attempts at all levels to change cultural and societal barriers to employment of young people, especially women.
However, the ILO's study of Yemen, where two-thirds of the population is under 25 and a third of working-age youth have no proper job, suggests the challenge may be just too big to beat.
The answer, it says, may lie in managed work migration to other countries in the region - not a message countries are likely to want to hear.
|
