Sara Elder

Aujourd’hui encore, les jeunes Africains peinent à trouver un emploi décent. Leur situation, notamment celles des femmes, ne s’améliore que très lentement. Si cette réalité empêche les jeunes d’exploiter pleinement leur potentiel, elle entraîne également un gaspillage de ressources pour les sociétés et peut mettre en péril la stabilité politique. Dans cet article, nous analysons la situation des jeunes et les mesures politiques nécessaires pour inverser la tendance, au vu des défis à relever et des lacunes à combler au niveau des politiques. Nous examinons également les politiques au niveau national car si en Afrique ces politiques sont généralement bien conçues, leur mise en œuvre laisse souvent à désirer. Nous présentons l’approche globale de l’OIT face à la crise de l’emploi des jeunes, puis la Stratégie UA/OIT pour l’emploi des jeunes en Afrique (YES Africa) qui est un bon exemple de cadre régional tenant compte des recommandations de l’OIT. Nous insistons sur la nécessité d’un changement de mentalité pour promouvoir des politiques globales de l’emploi et nous concluons par une série de recommandations visant à élaborer et à mettre en œuvre des politiques solides. Africa’s youth continue to face challenges in finding decent work. Progress to improve their situation has been very slow, especially for women. While this hinders young people to use their potential, it also means a waste of resources for societies and can put at risk political stability. We analyse the situation of young people and discuss the necessary policy frameworks that can make a difference, based on an analysis of challenges and policy gaps. We also analyse policies at the country level to show that on the one side policies in Africa are often well designed but that, on the other side, implementation is often lacking. We present the ILO’s comprehensive approach to youth employment issues and show that the AU/ILO Youth Employment Strategy for Africa (YES Africa) is a good example for a regional framework that takes into account the recommendations of the ILO framework. We promote the need for a shift of mindsets to promote comprehensive employment policy frameworks and conclude with a set of recommendations for good policy design and implementation.

For the years 1989 to 1992, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) previous findings are confirmed that the overall unemployment rate in Japan, as measured by the regular monthly survey, is only slightly changed when adjusted to US concepts of unemployment and is well below the US unemployment rate. Analyses of Japanese unemployment are facilitated by the results of a special labor force survey conducted each February in Japan. The special surveys investigate in detail the labor force status of Japan's population, providing analysts with a tool for better understanding the results of the regular monthly surveys, and allowing them to calculate broader measures of labor underutilization. The report also presents some revisions to the previously published data for 1988 and earlier years. These revisions are the result of a change in the way BLS interprets Japanese statistics on working part time for economic reasons, as well as the use of a new method of allocating the labor force according to full-time and part-time workers.