[발췌: C-E Chikezie] Decent work for youths: it's not about us vs them (Guardian, Jan 2014)

출처: Guardian, 23 Janruary 2014


※ 발췌 (excerpt):

Our discussion of the issue of youth unemployment often magics away the politics of a globalised world and leaves us just with well-introduced, country-specific, projects.

Youth unemployment is a global problem, although its manifestation in the poorest countries are all the more stark.

The analysis and remedies presented in a report this month by McKinsey on youth unemployment in Europe apply just as well in underdeveloped Afrian economies. Employers have positions to fill but cannot find suitable candidates among the armies of unemployed. Graduates leave eduation with skills ill-suited to employers' needs.

We can also draw similar conclusions about the ultimate impact this has on youths themselves. According to the Prince's Trust Youth Index 2014, joblessness and long-term unemployment among young people in the UK is associated with heightened feelings (compared to their peers in work or education) of hopelessness and helplessness (feeling they have nothing to live for) and symptoms of mental illness, including suicidal thoughts, panic attacks and feelings of self-loathing. It's a pretty bleak picture but one with which youths in, say, the urban slums of downtown Freetown, Sierra Leone would immediately empathise.

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In fact, for too long, development industry ignored jobs. The World Bank asserts now that jobs drive development but jobs used to be the elephant in the room. The millennium development goals only surrptitiously slipped in a new target to "achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people" belatedly in 2005.

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