Put simply, too many young people lack employable skills in a world that has too few skilled workers. The result is that in parts of the Middle East and north Africa youth unemployment remains stuck at around 25%; in Spain and South Africa about half of young would-be workers are unemployed; globally around 75m people aged 15 to 24 are jobless, and the International Labour Organisation expects this dismaying unemployment rate of almost 13% to rise.
But this business issue is a political issue, too. If young people who have played by society’s rules—working hard, for example, to graduate from school and university—find fewer and fewer opportunities to secure decent jobs and the sense of respect that comes with them, society will have to be prepared for outbreaks of anger or even violence. The evidence is already there in the riots that have recently scarred America, Britain, Chile, Egypt, Italy and Spain (to name but a few). As the jobless young resentfully note, the gap between the haves and have-nots in the OECD countries is at a 30-year high, with income among the top 10% nine times higher than that of the bottom 10%.
Among several promising approaches, one favoured by students is the “practicum”: a practical course involving either hands-on learning in the classroom or training on the job. Sadly, less than a quarter of education-providers use such methods—yet they should be the 21st-century equivalent of the 20th-century apprenticeship, a way for people to learn and continuously update their skills.
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