President Sirleaf

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf says the world should accept that there is no easy fix for youth unemployment, but that partnerships between the public and private sectors can make a difference in tackling this global problem.

The Liberian leader spoke on Wednesday, January 22, in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, when she addressed the opening plenary session of the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting on “Reshaping the World through Entrepreneurship, Education and Employment.”

According to a dispatch from the Forum, the Liberian President also said that large corporations which have been able to obtain concessions in developing countries should be prepared to address the unemployment problem through training, social benefits to communities, improvement in infrastructure in the communities, and through better relations and knowledge exchange with people in the communities.

There must also be urgent response to the call for linkages between the activities of the large corporations and the economy at large, President Sirleaf said, acknowledging that the evidence is clear that significant employment is not created by the large concessions and corporations, which are largely capital intensive in their operations, but by the small and medium-sized enterprises which lead to the development of a middle class, the most sustainable driver of employment.

President Sirleaf underscored that unless the world finds a solution to youth unemployment, the consequence for society, politics and business is likely to be civil upheaval, political instability and economic disruption across the globe.

Expanding further on the issue of youth unemployment, President Sirleaf described it as one of the major challenges of today, adding that it is complex; structural; and global.

Elaborating, she said that youth unemployment is complex because the drivers of this condition differ across the developed and developing world, across gender, across region, across age, across social status, across ethnicity; it is structural because institutions and system, particularly in developing countries, have not been able to respond to global technological shifts; and it is global because developed countries, normally sheltered by strong diversified economies and developed institutions, now face the same situation as they too try to deal with the changes of the reshaping world.

President Sirleaf recalled that in formulating the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, the Civil Society Forum identified youth unemployment as a major challenge to development, particularly for developing countries with high population growth.

Thirteen years later, she continued, the proposed Post-2015 Development Agenda confirms youth unemployment as an emergent crisis, worldwide. The genesis of the current crisis could, in part, be traced to the 2008 global financial crisis which decelerated global output and demand, engendering a spillover effect in emerging and developing market activities, thereby exacerbating unemployment, most especially among women and youths.

Observed the Liberian President: “Driven by this deceleration of global demand, private households and firms in developed economies deleveraged their high debt burden through increased saving rates and austerity measures in public sectors. This resulted in downward pressure on both private and public consumption and investment, dragging down aggregate demand and growth, with devastating effect on developing economies, especially those with high poverty levels and large employment in the informal sector.”

President Sirleaf mentioned that the International Labour Organization in 2013 estimated the global youth unemployment rate at 12.6 percent, implying unemployment of 73.8 million young people. In developed economies, youth unemployment increased by 24.9 percent since 2008, while some large economies, like Spain and Greece, registered rates over 50 percent.

During the same period, she pointed out, youth unemployment rates in developing economies were highest in the Middle East and North Africa, at 28.3 percent and 23.7 percent, respectively, and in sub-Saharan Africa at 11.8 percent, ignoring the extremely high level of vulnerably employed. She attributed such high youth unemployment to a missing pool of skilled labor, as well as insufficient growth to absorb a growing labor force. Consequently, surplus workers face vulnerabilities, as they are pushed into the informal sector where they lack regular income, benefits, job security, and pensions.

The Liberian President also pointed out that structural unemployment affects most vulnerable young people, who comprise large numbers of economic migrants, particularly from Asia and Africa, who continue to seek refuge in Europe, risking their lives in perilous voyages to pursue a livelihood, with resulting racial tensions in host countries. She quoted an African Development Bank finding that in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa and in all of North Africa, it is easier for men to get jobs than it is for woman, and that the effect of unemployment in women is similar.

In fragile states like Liberia, where education and vocational skill sets of entire generations have been casualties to violence, young people tend to be more seriously affected by the unemployment crisis, President Sirleaf said. Besides being a tipping point for political instability, she observed, this pool of unemployed tends to migrate to the cities, exacerbating urbanization pressures through a growing concentration of urban labor supply.

President Sirleaf told the Forum that despite average annual growth of 7 percent in Liberia since 2006, unemployment, especially youth unemployment, remains high and is a major challenge to the achievement of the country’s development goals. To address unemployment in one of Liberia’s most economically deprived areas, a pilot cash transfer program was launched, which targeted households typically headed by the elderly, people living with disabilities and chronic illnesses, and youth or single mothers with dependents.  By providing a relatively small amount of money – US$20 a month – on a regular basis, there was marked improvement in the lives of the beneficiaries.

The Liberian President concluded by indicating that the problem of unemployment requires multiple response strategies, among them: substantial investment in national education systems; the business environment for foreign and domestic firms; and that businesses recognize the importance of taxes, trade and transparency as critical for growth, prosperity and economic development. Also, the use of success stories of other countries; the establishment of special economic zones to promote profitable job-creating manufacturing opportunities; and investment in systems that enhance production and productivity in the subsistence and informal sectors to reduce unemployment, particularly among young people.