Syrians started flowing to Türkiye at the outset of the Syrian civil war back in 2011. As their numbers were rising to nearly 4 million refugees, their presence started posing several challenges to the host country’s labour market. How to accommodate nearly a million workers concentrated in a few provinces, relatively unskilled, with limited Turkish language skills? The answer, partly, involved integrating them into sectors hungry for informal workers, such as the textile and clothing industry under harsh working conditions and informality.

What role can young people play in shaping programmes that affect them? Why is it difficult for young people to find decent employment? What can be done to simultaneously promote meaningful youth engagement and decent jobs for young people?

A economia informal no Brasil, assim como em outros países da América Latina, representa uma parcela significativa de emprego e renda para os jovens. Além disso, a informalidade também vem contribuindo para a recuperação das distorções ocorridas no mercado de trabalho durante a pandemia COVID-19, com o emprego informal representando 43 por cento do número de empregos ganhos (empregos criados menos empregos perdidos) no Brasil entre os terceiros trimestres de 2020 e 2022 (OIT, 2023).

The informal economy in Brazil, like in other Latin American countries, represents a significant share of employment and income to young people. It has also contributed to the recovery from the shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, with informal employment accounting for 43 per cent of the number of jobs gained (jobs created minus jobs lost) in Brazil between the third quarters of 2020 and 2022 (ILO, 2023).

The future of our planet depends on how we skill and educate our young people today.

The Youth Hub is an intersectoral, inter-professional community of practice hosted by the Global Health Workforce Network (GWHN) and the Health Workforce Department at the WHO. The hub focuses on youth employment in health and social care, and aims to engage and include youth-inclusive policy to drive the Human Resources for Health (HRH) agenda.

Transitioning towards a ‘green economy’ can not only create a more sustainable and healthy planet, but also give countless opportunities for African youth employment. Creating green jobs is therefore essential to support a green transition.

The Sahel region and in particular the countries of the G5 Sahel, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, is experiencing a demographic transition characterized by a growing population and a “youth bulge”. The region counts a population of over 89 million people (World Bank, 2021), with around one third of them are aged 15-34 years and two thirds of them living in rural areas.

The global Covid-19 pandemic has deeply affected the Spanish labour market with a severe and systematic impact on youth employment. Young people are the group that has most acutely affected by the effects of the effects of the economic slowdown resulting from confinement. This is reflected in the fall in the activity rate (which measures the proportion of young people the proportion of young people who have a job or are actively actively seeking employment) and the fall in the employment rate fall in the employment rate.

The virtual gig economy is becoming an increasingly common feature of the modern employment landscape, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is no exception. Youth in the MENA region are turning their focus to online gig work in response to local job shortages, which have been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tourism was one of the sectors most affected by the COVID-19 crisis, with significant impacts on the economies, communities and countries that rely on the sector.