The number of unemployed 15 to 24 year-olds has risen sharply over the past decade, leaving about one-third of the world's young people without jobs or in abject poverty, the International Labour Organisation said on Monday.
In a report on "Global Employment Trends for Youth", the ILO warned that global economic growth was failing the young. It said about 400 million "new and better" jobs had to be created world-wide to resolve the problem. People in the 15 to 24 age group are three times as likely to be unemployed as older adults, especially in developing countries where they represent a larger proportion of the labour force, it added.
The number of unemployed youths, who are one of the most economically productive age groups in society, rose by 15 percent to 85 million between 1995 and 2005, according to the ILO.
Some 300 million youth are living on less than two dollars a day, it added. "Despite increased economic growth, the inability of economies to create enough decent and productive jobs is hitting the world's young especially hard," said ILO Director General Juan Somavia.
"This worrying trend threatens to damage the future economic prospects of one of the world's greatest assets - our young men and women," he said.
While their global population grew by 13 percent between 1995 and 2005, employment for 15 to 24 year-olds only grew by 3.8 percent.
The report said that even a high standard of education was no guarantee of decent employment for young people.
By far the highest increase in the unemployment among the young over the past decade has occurred in south-east Asia (85 percent), according to the report.
Developed economies and the 25-nation European Union were the only regions to experience a decline in unemployment among the young (-17.5 percent).
However, the report said that was down to the ageing population rather than job creation.
Young women face an even greater challenge than their male counterparts, especially in South Asia where the unemployment gap between the sexes reaches 35 percentage points, the ILO said.
Sub-Saharan Africa (34 percent) experienced the second highest growth in unemployment among the young, followed by Latin America (23 percent), the Middle East (18 percent) and South Asia (16 percent).
Young people now account for 44 percent of the world's unemployed, but represent just 25 percent of the labour force, the ILO said.
The global unemployment rate for young people is 13.5 percent compared to 4.6 percent for adults, the report said.
Ex-Soviet states now have the second-highest youth unemployment rate, averaging 20 percent, just behind the Middle East and North Africa (26 percent).