The school-to-work transition by the numbers
An overview of the issues and obstacles faced by young people searching for employment
3 minute read
Youth in the developing world have high expectations for transitioning to work…
3 in 4 believe they will get the kind of job they want.
4 in 5 aspire to be in a high-skilled profession.
…but the reality does not meet expectations.
Youth are three times more likely than adults to be unemployed.
1 in 2 young people are dissatisfied with their jobs.
Only 1 in 5 are in a high-skilled profession.
After leaving school, youth in the developing world find themselves in limbo…
It takes an average of 17 months for a young person to find their first job and 53 months to find their first decent job.
…and for some, the transition to decent work may never happen.
More than 4 in 10 youth age 25−29 had not yet transited into stable or satisfactory employment.
One contributing factor is the skills gap, which emerges early…
Sixty per cent of children do not meet minimum proficiency levels in reading. And less than three per cent of youth in survey countries demonstrate the highest cognitive skills. A breakdown of reading proficiency by educational attainment:
…and is compounded by chronic weaknesses in skills development systems.
The vast majority of skills-development systems exhibit weaknesses in accountability, market relevance, training excellence, and funding.
This leads to difficulties by employers in filling vacancies…
Skills gaps are the principal source of difficulty for firms trying to filling vacancies. A breakdown of the primary difficulties in filling vacancies, cited by employers in survey countries:
…and contributes to skills mismatches.
One in two youth workers are underqualified or overqualified for the job they hold.
However, skills are not enough if young people cannot access paid employment or start their own businesses…
2 in 3 surveyed employers use informal social ties as a main recruitment method.
Only 1 in 4 youth are able to access formal or informal financial services.
…or if good jobs simply do not exist.
The majority of jobs in the developing world are informal, in self-employment, and in low to medium-skilled occupations.
Gender norms and discrimination exacerbate these problems.
Girls are 2.5 times less likely than boys to have majored in STEM at the secondary level.
Young mothers are half as likely to work compared to young fathers due to unpaid household and childcare responsibilities.
Two thirds of youth employment programs fail due to program design.
Successful programs provide a holistic package of support based on beneficiary needs and local labor market realities.
Profiling and strategic targeting of beneficiaries
Linking funding to results
Engaging employers in program design and delivery
Aligning training with labor market demand
Having specialized and qualified personnel
Providing a diversified and integrated package of interventions
