Youth unemployment is the level of unemployment among young people, typically defined as those aged 15-24 The world

is facing a worsening youth employment crisis: young people are three times more likely to be unemployed than adults and over 75 million youth worldwide are looking for work. The ILO has warned of a scarred generation of young workers facing a dangerous mix of high unemployment, increased inactivity and precarious work in developed countries, as well as persistently high working poverty in the developing world. The ILO's programme on youth employment operates through a global network of technical teams at its headquarters in Geneva and in more than 60 offices around the world. It provides assistance to countries in developing coherent and coordinated interventions on youth employment. This integrated approach combines macro-economic policies and targeted measures which address labor demand and supply, as well as the quantity and quality of employment. More than 6 million youth worldwide have either given up searching for a job or have decided to prolong their studies due to the extremely adverse conditions in the labor market, says to the latest edition of the Global Employment Trends for Youth 2012 report (www.ilo.org/getyouth) published by the International Labor Organization (ILO). Youth unemployment rates in some European Union countries are scandalously high. Unemployment among young people has always been higher than general joblessness but the economic crisis has widened the gap further. According to Eurostat, 22 per cent of 15-24 yearolds in the EU are unemployed. In those countries hardest hit by the crisis, such as Greece and Spain, the rate is 50 per cent. Just like general unemployment statistics, youth unemployment is measured as the share of jobseeking youngsters in all youngsters who are either working or looking for work. But many young people do neither. Millions are in education. Many have simply given up looking for a job. These groups are not captured in youth unemployment statistics, which pushes up the youth unemployment rate. A more accurate indicator of the youth employment crisis is the NEET concept - the total of young people not in employment, education or training. The NEETs are a big burden for European countries. More importantly, a prolonged inactive period can scar youngsters for life. Many a NEET's earnings will never catch up with their peers; many face long-term unemployment and social problems. Some economists already talk of a 'lost generation'.

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Deeper reforms are needed. A good education is in many cases the best unemployment insurance. In France, for example, more than 80 per cent of those with a university degree have a job but only 55 per cent of those with basic education do. A university degree is not a job guarantee. In Spain, the share of those getting a degree is roughly the same as in the Netherlands. Yet Spanish students struggle much harder to find a job - and did so even before the current crisis - than Dutch ones. Governments must ensure that universities teach the kind of skills that employers are looking for.

Another potentially cheaper way of helping young people to find jobs is to make labor markets more flexible. Eurofound presents evidence that strict regulations, such as job protection laws, hurt young job-seekers disproportionately. A company will not hire young inexperienced workers if it cannot get rid of them in case they turn out to be useless or the business outlook deteriorates. Measures that are on the surface designed to benefit young workers such as stronger rights for temporary and part-time workers or minimum wages can push up NEET rates. However, although politicians regularly deplore Europe's high youth unemployment rates, the steps to improve the situation are often timid. The result is that the needs of young people are not properly represented in debates about how to change labor markets. Hence another perhaps somewhat surprising solution to the youth unemployment problem is for more young men and women to join trade unions and make their voices heard. Europe's young people are suffering disproportionately in the current crisis. European countries, and the EU, must do more to prevent them becoming a lost generation. Although many structural reforms will only really yield results when economic growth returns, the time to put them in place is now.

NEET is a government acronym for people currently "not in education, employment, or training". It was first used in the United Kingdom but its use has spread to other countries, mostly being used in Japan, China, and South Korea. People under the designation are called NEETs (or Neets). In the United Kingdom, the classification comprises people aged between 16 and 24 (some 16-year-olds are still of compulsory school age); the subgroup of NEETs aged 16 18 is frequently of particular focus. In Japan, the classification comprises people aged between 15 and 34 who are unemployed, not engaged in housework, not enrolled in school or work-related training, and not seeking work. The "NEET group" is not a uniform set of individuals.

The ticking time bomb scenario is a thought experiment that has been used in the ethics debate over whether torture can ever be justified. A complex or critical or unusual difficulty; "the dangerous situation developed suddenly"