‘Lockdown generation’: UN says 1 in 6 young workers unemployed due to pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused surging unemployment worldwide, but has hit young workers especially hard, forcing more than one in six people aged under 29 to stop working, the UN said Wednesday.

In a fresh study, the International Labour Organization warns that the novel coronavirus crisis has disproportionately affected young people, and could impact upon their work opportunities and career options for decades to come.

“I don’t think it is giving way to hyperbole to talk about the danger of a lockdown generation,” ILO chief Guy Ryder tells a virtual press conference.

“As we recover from the pandemic, a lot of young people are simply going to be left behind. Big numbers,” he says, warning that “the danger is… that this initial shock to young people will last a decade or longer.

“People will be permanently scarred by the immediate effects of the pandemic.”

Even before the crisis, the global youth unemployment rate stood at 13.6 percent in 2019 — far higher than for any other group — while some 267 million young people were neither employed nor in education or training (NEET).

— AFP