The bleak situation facing most young people in the Pacific is highlighted by two new reports. The first is Urban youth in the Pacific: increasing resilience and reducing risk for involvement in crime and violence from the UNDP Pacific Centre, in Suva (released 2 June). The second is The State of Pacific Youth 2010, commissioned by UNICEF and the SPC, available from 8 September. These reports are a focus of attention at the Pacific Forum Leaders Meeting in Auckland 6-9 September. A major item on the agenda is the need for action on youth employment.
As the main author of the second report, let me highlight some important data on youth employment prospects. Information about labour markets in the pacific is notoriously hard to find – no country conducts a labour force survey and recent census data are still to be analysed. The best option I found was to make use of the Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in recent years. These surveys were funded by the Asian Development Bank and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community and use a standard questionnaire.
The table below reports the employment rate for young people in six countries. Employment is defined as working in the last seven days and includes working in either the formal or informal sector. Many young people in the 15-19 age group are still in full-time education so I have excluded them from the table below.
However, by age 20-24 years, most young people in the Pacific are not in education, due to a low participation rate in post-secondary or tertiary education. The low employment rate for young men in this age group is particularly notable in Kiribati, Republic of the Marshall Islands and Samoa. Even where the employment rate is higher in Solomon Islands and Tuvalu, 36 and 30 per cent respectively of 20-24 year-old males are not working in either the formal or informal sectors. The employment situation does not improve much for young men aged 25-29 years in Kiribati, Samoa and Republic of the Marshall Islands. In Solomon Islands, one in four men in this age group are not working.
The employment rate for young women aged 20-24 years is, in nearly all cases, lower than for young men of the same age. In many instances, their employment rate is around half that of males. The only exception to this pattern is Kiribati where the female employment rate for this age group is higher. The female employment rate in the 25-29 year age group is still along way behind the male rate.
For many young men and women in the Pacific, the prospect of finding a wage job or earning an income in the informal economy is a major challenge. Increasing the number of young people in secondary education merely begs the question of what is their next step. As domestic job opportunities are limited in Pacific Island countries, young people need to have the chance to work elsewhere. One way to do this is for the Australian Government put far more effort into making its Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme work and to increase the number of places offered to at least match that of New Zealand’s successful scheme.
Finally, the issue of youth employment in the Pacific would get much more policy attention if a youth jobs indicator was reported on regularly alongside country-specific statistics on education attainment levels.
Richard Curtain is a Melbourne-based, public policy consultant, who has spent 18 months in Timor-Leste in 2008 and 2009, working on projects funded by USAID, UNICEF and AusAID. His current work for two major multilateral agencies in the region relates to Timor-Leste and to pacific island countries.
Sean
Greetings from the frontline of climate change: Funafuti, Tuvalu.
thanks for your comment on a key issue. I note in the State of Pacific Youth
2010 the following:
The adolescent birth rate is highest in the Marshall Islands (138 per 1,000) and
Papua New Guinea (104 per 1,000), with rates higher than Bangladesh (133 per
1,000) and or close to Laos (110 per 1,000), the countries with highest
adolescent birth rates in the Asian region.
So adolescent pregnancy is both a result of the youth bulge and part contributor. A
major cause is the lack of economic and social opportunties – shown by the fact
that outer island adolescents in the Marshall Islands have double the national rate.
So my view is that the reducing adolesent birthrate requires a more complex set
of interventions than simply providing access to birth control.
Best wishes,
Richard
Thanks for an interesting post Richard.
These reports importantly raise concerns/questions relating to the number of youth in the Pacific (the ‘youth bulge’), the challenges Pacific youth continue to face, and the policy options for addressing these. With regard to the latter, it is understandable that efforts be made to increase youth access to employment and education but I was disappointed with how little emphasis was placed on the importance of increasing youth and women’s access to quality SRHR services, particularly basic rights based family planning services.
It strikes me as concerning that there is so little discussion about the link between Pacific women’s wanted fertility rates and unmet need for contraception and the Pacific ‘youth bulge’. Further, that this link does not more strongly feed into the recommended policy responses of these reports. If Pacific women (particularly young adolescent women) continue to be unable to realise their fertility desires, a basic human right, the Pacific will continue to face the social and economic challenges associated with youth bulges and it’s more likely that the next State of Pacific Youth report will again note ‘the situation of young people in the Pacific… has changed little’.
I’d be interested in any thoughts / comments.