Abstract
Young women and men today face an ever more difficult task in finding their place in the world of work. In low- and middle-income countries, informal employment has come to dominate young people’s labour market experiences, while in high-income countries, work for youth increasingly means temporary and other non-standard forms of employment. This book brings together contributions from the ILO’s Youth Employment Programme detailing policies that enable young people to find decent work. The chapters are organized around the pillars of the ILO’s 2012 call for action on youth employment and consider the impacts of a broad range of interventions including fiscal and sectoral development policies, minimum wages and active labour market programmes. An important theme running through the book – in addition to the growing instability of youth employment – is the importance of interactions and complementarities between institutions, policies and the broader economic context. “Niall O’Higgins and colleagues have produced an insightful, world-oriented account of youth employment problems and policy options. The research embraces low - and middle - income countries, not just the high-income countries that dominate the literature. This book is both technically well constructed and highly readable.” – Paul Ryan, Fellow, King’s College Cambridge.