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The condition of our youth (Part 1)

Published: Sunday | January 30, 2011 1 Comment

Don Robotham12>

What is the economic condition of Jamaican youth?When we look at the data, six points stand out: First,the youth population, although still large, isdeclining. Second, the issue of improving youthliteracy and numeracy is a crucial one for allcategories of youth. Third, it is not only unemployed

youth who face serious economic problems: we havethousands of 'working poor youth', especially in the20-29 age group. For such youth, the issue is not just'jobs' but the quality of thejob.

The fourth point to note is that the construction sector is thesingle most important sector for youth employment. Aboutone-third of employed youth in the 20-29 age set are inconstruction and installation. Gender is another key issue(think the growing number of women gas stationattendants). Generally, female unemployment rates areabout 1.5 times higher that of males. Yet women are as highas 54 per cent of all those employed in the 20-29 age set inthe construction sector. As many as 40 per cent of allemployed young women (20-29 only) make their living inthat sector. Finally, the rapid islandwide urbanisation (not tobe discussed here) is a very important factor inunderstanding youth conditions in Jamaica today.

General Trends

Although the youth continue to be a significant segment ofour total population (about 673,000 persons), they are adeclining part. The youth declined from 30.5 per cent of ourtotal population in 1985 to 24.9 per cent in 2009. As Table 1

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makes clear, by 2020, the youth will have declined further toonly 23.2 per cent of our total population.

The reason for this is that, contrary to popular perception,Jamaica is a country with a low birth rate and even lowerpopulation growth rate. The crude birth rate, which hadalready fallen to 20 per thousand in 2000, is currently 16.3per 1,000 and projected to fall further to about 12 per 1,000by 2025.

The population growth rate, already at 0.52 per cent from2000, is currently at 0.33 per cent and is projected to fallfurther to 0.26 per cent by 2025. Indeed, by 2035, Jamaicawill have negative population growth of -0.09 per cent and

will face a problem not of its youth bulge, but of its ageingpopulation.

Neither School Nor Work

Let us consider briefly some of the data on the employmentsituation of our youth. Next week I shall discussunemployment.

What Table 2 reveals is that as many as 59 per cent

(399,137 persons) of the total population in the 15-29 agegroup are either outright unemployed or 'not in the labourforce'. The second key point is this: The largest group by faris those who have stopped looking for work altogether andwho have dropped out of the labour force completely. This isa shocking 331,551 persons - roughly half of the entire agegroup. And we wonder why we have a crime problem! Taking'younger youth' (15-19) by themselves, as many as 88 percent (220,752 persons) are in this position - in neither school

nor work.

Human Infrastructure

As shown in Table 2, the total number of employed youth is273,801 persons, constituting about 41 per cent of the entire15-29 age group. If one looks more closely at the data, it is

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clear that employed youth dominate the 20-29 age set,comprising a total of 258,467 persons, or 61 per cent of thatage set. Much more attention needs to be paid to these'older youth'. It is utter folly to assume that since they are in

some form of employment, they are fine.The chief problem facing these employed older youth is thelow quality of the jobs they currently perform. These jobscluster at the bottom end of the labour market, areoverwhelmingly unskilled or semi-skilled, pay low wages,have low productivity, no career structure, no job security,and no housing trust, pension or other benefits. In addition,working hours can be long, irregular, and exhausting.Youngconstruction workers and mechanics are typical of

this set. Table 3 sets out the industry group of all employedyouth in the age set 20-29 only.

A key conclusion from these data is the following: Any policywhich seeks to improve the conditions of employed youthmust focus on the construction sector. Every majorconstruction project, starting with the Jamaica DevelopmentInfrastructure Programme (JDIP), must be about developinghuman, not just physical, infrastructure. About 10 per cent

(US$40 million) of the JDIP budget needs to be set asidepurely to upgrade the skills of young workers, male andfemale. The point is not just to provide temporary jobs forthe youth to win votes; the point is to make a lasting changein the living conditions of youth, which would actually wineven more votes!

Let us use construction projects to upgrade young people inthe labour market so that in the future they will not just be'common labourers' but have access to higher-quality jobs.

Finally, on literacy and numeracy: until the youth survey iscompleted, we will not have good up-to-date data on this keyarea. However, here are some old data (1999) which maynot have changed all that much in some respects: the levelof formal training in the employed labour force is still about26 per cent; and about 74 per cent of all unemployed youth

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had no educational certification of any kind, although 26.8per cent had four years or more of secondary schooling.

However, from 20 years ago, 18.5 per cent of theunemployed youth had one or more GCE/CXC (probablymore today). We also know that about half of HEART/NTAapplicants fail the entrance exams (most do not even sit).Further, only 11.5 per cent of HEART/NTA graduates achievebeyond Level I (semi-skilled). A rapid feminisation ofHEART/NTA enrollees has taken place, with about 80 percent of those in popular areas like information technologyand tourism being women. Low levels of literacy andnumeracy are the chief obstacles preventing young peoplefrom advancing from the unskilled or semi-skilled level into

better-quality jobs.

Professor Don Robotham is an anthropologist. Emailfeedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.

Source: STATIN. Jamaica Labour Force Survey, 2009[Computer file]. Kingston, Jamaica: STATIN [producer], 2009.Kingston, Jamaica: STATIN and Derek Gordon Databank,University of the West Indies [distributors], 2010