Youth Unemployment Challenge and Solutions - What Business Can Do Now

The global economy is in the midst of a series of demographic and economic shifts, leading to what ManpowerGroup has called the “Human Age.” And too many young people are being left behind. In the Human Age, technological transformations have rendered many formerly scarce resources abundant, while the key constraints on economic and business development have become the skills, knowledge, and talent embodied in individual workers. In the Human Age, economic success and failure will increasingly be determined by the strategic acquisition and management, by businesses and individuals, of economically-relevant skills. In this paper, ManpowerGroup looks at the youth employment challenge from the talent-centric perspective of the Human Age. The starting point is that youth have difficulty in the labour market because of identifiable - and remediable -deficits as potential valuable talent for employers: lack of work-relevant skills, lack of information and connections for acquiring appropriate skills, lack of experience and credentials that could get them started on an upward path, and limited opportunities for entry-level work that is career oriented. ManpowerGroup identifies a series of specific actions, informed by 64 years of experience in the world of work, that employers can undertake now to help address the youth unemployment challenge.