Young people across the world are struggling to find work. Even before the pandemic hit, young people were three times more likely to be unemployed than those over the age of 25. And one in five met the criteria for what the international system characterizes as NEET—for “not in education, employment or training”—meaning they weren’t gaining experience in the labor market, receiving an income from work or enhancing their education and skills.
Now, the pandemic has demonstrated that in a crisis, young workers are also among the first to lose their jobs. More than one in 10 young people—aged 16 to 25—were forced to leave their jobs at the onset of the crisis. It also appears that they will be the last to get them back. So far, governments and the international system have done little to address these job shortages, fueling fears that today’s young people are set to become a “lockdown generation,” trapped in a trajectory of long-term unemployment.
But this isn’t even the full story. Even when young people are able to find work, it is often poorly paid and insecure. In all parts of the world, they are finding themselves exploited by the “gig economy,” in which companies and employees connect, increasingly through digital platforms, and agree on short-term working relationships. Though the emergence of the gig economy was initially hailed for promoting flexible working patterns, research suggests that most digital labor platforms “fail to ensure many minimum standards of fair work” and “uphold a deeply flawed economy built upon worker … suffering.”