The world is facing an urgent skills crisis. Only around one in four of the world’s young people are on track to learn the skills they need for employment and decent livelihoods. Too often, this pushes them into a life of further disadvantage perpetuating cycles of poverty and disadvantage.
In 2014, the United Nations General Assembly declared July 15 as World Youth Skills Day to celebrate the strategic importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship, as well as for addressing global challenges and advancing sustainable development. Since then, World Youth Skills Day events have provided a unique opportunity for dialogue between young people, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions, firms, employers’ and workers’ organisations, policy makers and development partners. Participants have highlighted the ever-increasing significance of skills as the world is embarking on a transition towards a sustainable model of development.
The theme for World Youth Skills Day 2024 is Youth Skills for Peace and Development. It highlights the crucial role that young people play in peace building and conflict resolution efforts. This theme is appropriate for countries such as Sri Lanka, which have emerged from decade-long conflicts and where youth from conflict-hit areas may not be able to access quality TVET institutions.
The world faces a multitude of challenges today, many of which affect the youth. Violent conflicts disrupting education and stability, a polarized online environment fostering negativity, and persistent economic inequality limits opportunities. These issues threaten not only individual futures but also the overall stability of societies. It is crucial to equip youth with the necessary skills for fostering a culture of peace, nurturing responsible global citizens, and promoting sustainable development to build a more just, inclusive, and sustainable future for all.
On World Youth Skills Day 2024, we have to recognise the potential of young people as agents of peace and commit to providing them with the skills and opportunities to address challenges and contribute to a peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable future.
Recent estimates suggest that 600 million jobs would have to be created over the next 15 years to meet youth employment needs. In 2021, approximately 75 million young people were unemployed, 408 million were employed and 732 million were out of the labour force globally. The share of youth Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET) in 2020 – the latest year for which a global estimate is available – rose to 23.3 percent, an increase of 1.5 percentage points from the previous year and a level not seen in at least 15 years.
Volunteering initiatives
The youth population will grow by more than 78 million between 2024 and 2030. The total global number of unemployed youths is estimated to reach 73 million in 2024, a slight improvement from 2021 but still six million above the pre-pandemic level of 2019. Education and training systems need to respond to this challenge. According to the UN, an additional 8.4 million jobs for young people could be created by 2030 through the implementation of Green and Blue policy measures. Good-quality apprenticeships, well-designed internships, and volunteering initiatives can provide entry points into the labour market for first-time jobseekers and young graduates.
Education and training are also central to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda. The vision of the “Incheon Declaration: Education 2030” is fully captured by Sustainable Development Goal 4 – “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. Education 2030 devotes considerable attention to technical and vocational skills development, specifically regarding access to affordable quality Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET); the acquisition of technical and vocational skills for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship; the elimination of gender disparity and ensuring access for the vulnerable.
In this context, TVET is expected to address the multiple demands of an economic, social and environmental nature by helping youth and adults develop the skills they need for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship, promoting equitable, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, and supporting transitions to green economies and environmental sustainability.
TVET can equip youth with the skills required to access the world of work, including skills for self-employment. TVET can also improve responsiveness to changing skill-demands by companies and communities, increase productivity and increase wage levels. TVET can reduce access barriers to the world of work, for example through work-based learning, and ensuring that skills gained are recognised and certified. TVET can also offer skills development opportunities for low-skilled people who are under- or unemployed, out of school youth and NEETs.
Sustainable development efforts
The active engagement of youth in sustainable development efforts is central to achieving sustainable, inclusive and stable societies and averting the worst threats and challenges to sustainable development, including the impacts of Climate Change, unemployment, poverty, gender inequality, conflict, and migration. But rising youth unemployment is a significant problem facing economies and societies.
OECD surveys suggest that both employers and youth consider that many graduates are ill-prepared for the world of work. This is especially so in Sri Lanka, where many graduates have not followed courses that have any relevance to job market requirements. In many countries, the informal sector and traditional rural sector remain a major source of employment but these jobs are not assured.
The number of workers in vulnerable employment currently stands at 1.44 billion worldwide, which was exacerbated by the pandemic. One in four young people in the world cannot find jobs paying more than US$ 1.25 per day, the international threshold of extreme poverty. Again, it comes down to the available skills or the lack thereof. Disturbingly, males are more likely to find employment than females, even in the unskilled category. And even when they find employment, their wages are almost always lower than those paid to men. In fact, it will take around 175 more years to achieve gender parity in salary terms, according to the UN.
Young people are almost three times more likely to be unemployed than adults and are continuously exposed to lower quality of jobs, greater labour market inequalities, and longer and more insecure school-to-work transitions. In addition, women are more likely to be underemployed and under-paid, and to undertake part-time jobs or work under temporary contracts.
UNESCO states that one reason for youth unemployment, which affects all regions around the world, is a mismatch between the skills workers can offer and the skills which are in demand. This is known as structural unemployment. This is prevalent in Sri Lanka as well. If you glance through the vacancies sections of this newspaper, thousands of jobs are advertised, but some ads are repeated week after week, apparently because the employers cannot find suitable job takers. In other words, many people in the job market do not have the particular set of skills that the employers need.
Sri Lanka, however, had a relatively low unemployment rate until the pandemic struck and threw many people out of their jobs, not to mention the void in the creation of new jobs. The economic meltdown of 2022 aggravated the situation. But if the mismatch between education and the job market can be addressed, this can be resolved at least partially.
Vocational training programs
There should be focus on skills development among both young males and females. The latter should be encouraged to venture into the more male dominated sectors such as motor mechanism/car repair, heavy vehicle/earthmoving equipment operations, welding and air-conditioning. Males too should be encouraged to take up sewing/tailoring, cookery and other vocations. Sri Lanka already has a good structure for vocational training, with technical colleges around the island and a central Vocational Training Authority (VTA). There is a national NVQ (National Vocational Qualification) certification system that is accepted in most countries.
The problem in Sri Lanka is not essentially the lack of vocational training opportunities. The main issue is that every student tries to enter a State university, which is impossible given that only around 30,000 State university openings are available annually. This means almost 100,000 students who do have the required admission qualifications cannot enter universities, whereby a large number of students end up without getting any sort of job-oriented education.
This is one problem that our educationists and lawmakers should address. Our curricula must be aligned with the needs of the job market for students to find jobs easily. For example, the aviation sector will have thousands of job openings for pilots, cabin crew, aircraft maintenance, ground handling, Air Traffic Control (ATC) and customer service over the next decade. There is no focus at all on such fields in our school and university education system. Worse, several vocational subjects were removed from the curricula some time back, the repercussions of which we still feel. This should be rectified without delay.
Another key issue is that the informal workforce has had no formal training and depends on skills acquired by informal means. This translates into lower wages and career uncertainty. Thus it is always better to acquire formal vocational training. In Sri Lanka, a mason or carpenter may have several Golayas (pupils or assistants) who learn the trade under him, but they have no certificates or formal qualifications. This may prove problematic if they apply for jobs at well-known construction companies here or abroad which generally require formal training certification.
Unemployment and poverty are two social evils. If youths are skillful, they will get jobs and become self-reliant and many problems in society would be solved. Gainfully employed youth will also not turn to drugs, vice and crime.
Parents and teachers should encourage students who display a talent for skills and subjects other than textbook studies. If a youngster displays a knack for a mechanical-oriented subject, let him or her continue. If she or he is forced to give it up, that could be a loss to the economy one day.
The school is the obvious place to start job hunting. There are three approaches – vocational subjects, education fairs and job fairs. Vocational subjects should be taught to all students, irrespective of whether they would eventually take to a vocation. Education fairs obviously focus on higher educational opportunities here and abroad, other than the State universities. By participating in these fairs, students gain an idea of what skills and qualifications are needed to find a job.
STEM education, a must
In Sri Lanka, it is virtually difficult to find a job that does not require a good knowledge of English. This is indeed why some private companies prefer school-leavers who can speak good English over university graduates who are not very fluent in the language. The university students must abandon their “Kaduwa” mentality when it comes to English.
English, though not essentially a vocational subject, must be taught to all aspiring job seekers. Sri Lanka must also improve its STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education especially for girls.
Our policymakers as well as the youth must be aware of two more challenges – Artificial Intelligence (AI) automation/robotics and digitalisation. Yes, these trends are likely to take some skilled jobs away within the next few years and decades.
The key is to identify sectors where automation or digitalisation would not make much of a difference even in the future. We need skills for the present, but we must keep an eye on future trends too as we mark World Youth Skills Day. And skills are not just for the youth – one should be able to acquire them at any stage in life, which is what Singapore does with its SkillsFuture program. Sri Lanka too needs to borrow a page from that book.
