Citizen Action Against Poverty has insisted that the economic exclusion of young people is one of the structural roots of our labor system that generate poverty in our country[1].

• Young people (15 to 29 years) represent 521 TP3T of unemployed people and 481 TP3T of total unemployment.
• The total unemployment rate for young people is more than double that of adults between 30 and 64 years old, (16% vs. 7%).
• Two thirds of young people in work (10.2 million) do not earn enough to rise above the poverty line.
• 6 out of 10 young people are employed in precarious jobs without social security (9.6 million).

These data show the urgency of implementing policies for the labor and economic inclusion of young opportunity to reverse the main barriers to accessing work in decent conditions[2]. The main barriers they face young opportunity are:

Educational lag. 88% of unemployed young people are in educational lag, a determining factor in labour exclusion. Young people from lower-income households have more than three times the educational lag (39%) than young people with higher incomes (11%). There are no accessible options for them to young opportunity obtain the High School Certificate once they have left school without completing it.

Lack of skills and competencies in line with the new requirements of the productive sector. The educational offer is not very relevant and is outdated for developing these skills, and public job training programs have very low coverage, in addition to being behind in their updating.

The economic exclusion of women due to the burden of unpaid care work. In Mexico, there are more than 24 million women excluded from work, of which 20 million women cannot go out to look for work because they are doing unpaid care and domestic work: 93% of the people excluded from paid work and dedicated to care and domestic work are women. The low female labor participation has been stable since we have comparable data (2005). It is a structural condition, which recently fluctuated around 46% of women of working age.

Discrimination based on educational level, gender, social class and skin colour. Young people constantly face discriminatory practices in hiring processes and a lack of sensitivity from employers towards young people and their contexts. 281% of young people report having been discriminated against. And of these, 331% reported having been discriminated against in getting a job or a promotion at work.

With this objective, together with the Alliance of Youth with Decent Work and GOYN CdMx, we call for the SiJalo Learning Community[3], where every 15 days we meet people and institutions from the social, private and public sectors to learn about and learn about public employability policies for young people that have been successful in different countries around the world, and thus nourish with knowledge our proposal and influence at local and national level.

In this article we would like to share with you some of the lessons learned from the three sessions that have taken place up to the day of publication of this article:

1. What works and has been shown to have the greatest impact on youth employability are those comprehensive interventions that combine various components (options to complete compulsory schooling, guidance and induction into the world of work, training in workplaces and/or qualifying internships in work environments with ongoing mentoring and support, subsidies for youth employment, tax incentives for employers, certification of competencies and skills, job search support services and job placement) to address the complex and multi-sectoral problems faced by young people. It is essential that such interventions, from their design, respond to the needs of the local labor market; there are no recipes that can be replicated in different contexts[4].
2. Employment subsidies and tax incentives for hiring young people alone have no impact on the labour insertion of young people. They are relevant if and only if they are accompanied by actions that address the lack of experience of young people, such as apprenticeship programmes and training in workplaces that guarantee significant experiences in the productive operation of companies[5].
3. Institutional management capacity, especially at the subnational and coordination level, is essential for the proper implementation of public employability policy[6].
4. It is desirable that public policy designed at a national level guarantees experiences related to the needs of the "labor markets" of each region where it is implemented and that, through local public agents, the supply and demand of work are linked at a local level, in addition to including other actors such as companies, unions, and civil society organizations in the different components of the comprehensive employability policy.  

From the Yes Jalo Community We will be sharing our findings to strengthen our demand for an employability policy for young people opportunity.

If you want to be part of this community, contact sarah.aguilar@frentealapobreza.mx / https://www.sijalo.mx/

[1] For further information on the economic exclusion of young people, see: Citizen Action Against Poverty (2023). “Getting to the root of poverty. Diagnosis and proposals to eradicate poverty” available at: https://frentealapobreza.mx/ir-a-la-raiz-de-la-pobreza/. All data in this article comes from said report.

[2] Opportunity youth are resilient, creative people with problem-solving skills, who come from adverse contexts that produce structural barriers to finding work and who, by having an opportunity for social, educational and work inclusion in decent conditions, contribute to the economic growth of the country and begin a process of social mobility.

[3] For more information and to consult the materials: https://www.sijalo.mx/

[4] First SíJalo Session (February 6, 2024). Clemente Ávila Parra “Global overview on public policies for youth employability opportunity” (World Bank). Available at: https://www.sijalo.mx/

[5] The Chilean labor insertion policy, “Chile Jóven,” consists of combining public subsidies for the hiring and training of young people, through the Apprentice Program (regulated by a Law) that consists of bonuses to companies to improve the income of young people, contributing 50% of the minimum monthly income, and a training bonus of up to 400.00 pesos that the company receives for each young person trained (for up to 12 months). This dual training program has had an impact of 64% of the placement of young people in stable and continuous jobs. On the other hand, they have the Tax Exemption Pre-Contract Program, through which training contracts are carried out with companies, which can allocate up to 11% of the annual gross wage to invest in the training of people who are not their own workers but whose training implies improvements in the productivity of said companies. This amount is reduced from the taxes that must be paid to the Treasury during the following year. The impact of the program is 71% of placement of people in jobs. For more information, consult the materials corresponding to the Second Sí Jalo session (February 15, 2024). Rodrigo Valdivia “Apprentices, youth employment subsidy and SENCE” (Chile). Available at: https://www.sijalo.mx/

[6] Third SíJalo Session (February 29, 2024) Paula Forteza “Young people with more and better jobs” (Argentina) Available at: https://www.sijalo.mx/