3 July 2008

Over the last ten years, helped by vibrant economic activity and in some cases by targeted policy measures, unemployment among young men and women declined in the UNECE region. However, according to the ILO, the decline was rather uneven from both gender and regional perspective, and was not strong enough to reduce the rate discrepancy between the youth and the rest of population in labour force. In fact, in 2007 the average youth unemployment rate was more the than double the rate of overall unemployment in the CIS and southeastern Europe, and about twice as high in the European Union and other developed economies.

The gender differences also persisted. As the chart attests, unemployment rates are more often higher for young women than for young men, and in some cases by a wide margin (Greece, Spain, Kazakhstan, Slovenia). Only in about a third of sample countries is the unemployment rate higher for young men, but the gap is rather minimal, except for the United Kingdom, where over the last decade, the unemployment rate for young men was persistently higher than that of young women.

Source:UNECE Gender Statistics Database (www.unece.org/stats/data)and Eurostat.

Note: Youth unemployment rate refers here to unemployed persons of 15-24 years old as a percentage of the labour force in the same age group.