Over the past 50 years, huge progress has been made in education enrolment across emerging markets. Yet, while the supply of skilled labour has risen as a result, there aren’t enough jobs to match. Young people suffer the most; globally, 17.9 per cent of young people are unemployed.2 Worryingly, this trend has been steadily increasing for a decade.
Underemployment – where people don’t have enough paid work or are not doing work that makes full use of their skills and abilities – is another troubling issue. More than 29 per cent of employed young people around the world live in either extreme or moderate poverty.3