Saudi- Youth unemployment 'key challenge in Arab world'

(MENAFN- Arab News) RIYADH: Youth unemployment is one of the key challenges facing Arab countries the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) said in its latest report.
The report titled 'Youth Unemployment in Arab Countries' touched on efforts exerted by Arab countries in a bid to minimize the rate of unemployment in general and youth unemployment in particular and how to learn from global experiences in this regard.
Youth unemployment is a major challenge facing most world countries including developed and developing countries the report said. Citing estimates released by the International Labor Organization (ILO) the report said there were 75 million unemployed young men in the world.
Rates of unemployment among youths are three times the rates existing among other age groups the report said.
The rate of unemployment grew substantially in the aftermath of the world economic crisis in a number of countries in the world leading to the increase of job seekers covering all age groups to hit 211 million by the end of 2014 the report said.
As regards Arab countries the governments put in enormous efforts in the past two decades by adopting programs to achieve economic stability which contributed to boosting macroeconomic performance and helped contain internal and external imbalances the report said.
The reform momentum which marked the late 1990s shifted into structural reforms aiming to improve efficient use of resources through the liberalization of goods services and capital it said.
These measures enabled Arab countries raise the real growth rates to reach an average rate of 5 percent between 2000-2014 the report said.
On the other hand Arab countries adopted a series of policies and arrangements which were meant to provide more job opportunities for their citizens notably the youths which helped raise the employment rate during the past decade that outperformed the rates registered in other geographical zones of the world the report pointed out.
Such reforms enabled Arab countries to curb unemployment rate among youth at an annual average rate of 0.8 percent in a six-year period (2003-2009) the report said.
However unfavorable developments in the global economic environment represented by the global economic crisis together with internal situations in some of regional countries curbed the above positive growth rate to register the highest global youth unemployment rate of 28 percent compared to 12 percent in other regions the report said.
The youth unemployment rate comes amid the record high growth rate of the Arab labor force which grew by nearly 3 percent between 2000 and 2013 the highest labor force growth rate in the world the report said.
Touching on the features of unemployment in Arab countries the report said youth unemployment is concentrated on females the educated and new entries in the labor market.
The rate of unemployment among females in Arab countries stood at 43.4 percent compared to 12.7 percent at the global level. The educated category in the Arab countries represents 40 percent of the total unemployed whereas new entries in the labor market are facing real challenges to get job opportunities the report said.