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The situation in South-East Asia and the Pacific
Youth unemployment rates in South-East Asia and the Pacific are considerably higher than in East Asia and South Asia: the regional rate in South-East Asia and the Pacific reached 13.1 per cent in 2012. Youth in this region seem to be particularly challenged, as the ratio of youth to-adult unemployment rates is estimated at 5.2 in 2012. In other words, young people in South-East Asia and the Pacific are over five times more likely to be unemployed than adults. Globally, the ratio was 2.8, and in South Asia it was 4.0, both in 2012.
Nevertheless, trends in youth unemployment have been encouraging in the two most populous countries in South-East Asia and the Pacific: the Philippines and Indonesia. The youth unemployment rate in the Philippines was 16.0 per cent in the second quarter of 2012, compared with 16.6 per cent in the same period of 2011 and 18.8 per cent in the same period of 2010. In Indonesia, youth unemployment has declined significantly from 23.0 per cent in 2011 to 19.6 per cent in 2012.
Since the onset of the global economic and jobs crisis in 2008, part-time work seemed to have become an increasingly significant part of labour market adjustments for youth in the Philippines, while in other countries such as Thailand part-time work is on a downward trend.
Moreover, while part-time employment remains higher among young Filipino men than their female counterparts, the increase in the part-time employment rate since 2008 has been considerably higher among female youth (8.6 percentage points) than male youth (5.5 percentage points). In contrast, part-time employment among young people in Thailand is significantly lower than in the Philippines (figure 7). The share of Thai youth in part-time work has fluctuated but trended downward from 14.6 per cent (712,000) in 2008 to 13.7 per cent (651,000) in 2012, with slight increases in 2009 and 2012. However, an important development is the increase in part-time employment among young Thai females in recent years to 13.9 per cent in 2012, now marginally exceeding the rate of 13.6 per cent for male youth. In many countries, including Indonesia, a large share of part-time workers would prefer to work full time.
How the youth guarantee concept could be applied to South-East Asia and the Pacific?
Youth Guarantee should be seen as a right of every young person to have access to either education or a decent job, combined with access to social protection. Several countries in Europe have had positive experience in using youth guarantees to prevent unemployment during the school-work transition. The first countries to implement youth guarantees in the 1980s and 1990s were Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. More recently, following high rates of youth unemployment, other countries have embarked on similar programmes. These include Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland.
However, in the South-East Asia and the Pacific the challenge would be how to design the youth guarantee and how to implement such a scheme. In this sense, the Youth Employment Unit at the ILO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific will soon start a new study on Youth Guarantees in the ASEAN: Reviewing Challenges and Opportunities
. The study will highlight regional tendencies and needs, and it will offer recommendations to policy makers in the region.
In developing countries in Asia, for better design and implementation of cost-effective measures there is still a need for well-functioning labour market institutions, improved PES infrastructures, better quality of skills trainings. Nonetheless, recently, in most developing countries in Asia, Governments have started to invest into PES and enhanced SPFs. Countries like Republic of Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand are already exploring such approach.