With regards to employment status on a world level 28.6% occupy a continuous and stable employment (permanent employee). Those in temporary, precarious or undeclared work are 19.5%. The rate of unemployment is not negligible. Working students account for 14.5% of the total.

The situation in the irregular, temporary and precarious category has very bad consequences on the possibility of young people fully living the transition to adulthood, decreasing the possibility of them being economically autonomous and of building their own family life. (ICYCW Asia meeting, 2006)

The ILO (2008) report notes that most of the working poor are likely to eke out a living in the informal economy. Labour force surveys describe them as “own account workers”, and it is notable that this category has grown faster than employees in recent years, especially in the poorest countries. The share of own account workers reached 33% of world employment in 2006, with the largest numbers in sub-Saharan Africa (48 %) and South Asia (47 %). Own account workers are the workers in small and very small enterprises. Casual wage workers form the large majority of those labouring in the informal economies of the developing world.

Looking more closely at the continents, a more significant percentage of young Europeans (37.9%) had continuous and stable work. The data from Europe shows the contractualization and flexibilization of employment which has gradually touched the labour markets in Europe these last decades, and of which the effects have become increasingly more visible in recent years. Thus, young people enter into the labour market especially through temporary contracts of employment which are not always exchanged, at least in the short run, for a more stable contract giving them access to social protection and other benefits.

The total unemployed rate is 14.1% on the world level. This rate is very close to the ILO figures for unemployed young workers released in 2004 which is 14.4%. Europe had the lowest unemployment rate of 9.4%, Asia and the Middle East at 11.6%, Africa at 13.7 % and alarmingly the highest is Latin America at 29.3%.

The ILO (2007) noted that from 1996-2006 the global growth of economy which is 4.1% per annum has yielded an employment growth of just 1.6% per annum and Global unemployment actually nudged up over this period, from 6.2% in 1996, to 6.3% in 2006.

The unemployment figures indicate the presence of the reality of the two worlds; the “HAVES” and the “HAVE NOTS”. This is evident when one compares Europe which belongs to the first world economy (high income, highly industrialised economies) with the rest of the continents which mostly rank among third world economies (agricultural base and developing economy). (put the notation of the book and explain more)

In Africa, the figure for the jobless in the survey does not correspond to the ILO figure which is 21%. During ICYCW Team visits to young people in Africa the young people normally say they are involved in a personal business and are shy to admit that they don’t make a living.

Working within a family enterprise is not considered an employment in many Asian countries though most of the young people involved in this type of employment get paid like any other employee in an enterprise. (Asia meeting, 2006).

The Self-employed (13.7%) figure in Africa is also a bit higher compared with the other continents. This may correspond to the reality of informal work in Africa.

The sample reveals an alarming situation in Latin America. It underlines the fact that unemployment touches 29.3% of the interviewed young workers. In general, the rate of unemployment in Latin America for young people ranges from 1.5 times to 2.5 times higher than the average unemployment rate for each country in the continent. In our survey in particular, Peru accounts for 36.17% of the total unemployed young people who responded in the survey followed by Argentina which accounted for 9.58%.

According to Gender at the world level there are more unemployed male (14.6%) than female (13.6%). At the regional level, there are more women that are unemployed compared with men in the continent of Africa (15.8% vs 12.4%) The opposite is the case in Europe (7.7% vs 11.1%) and in Asia and the Middle East (9.8% vs 13%).

According to ILO (2008) the female unemployment rate worldwide stood at 6.4 per cent compared with the male unemployment rate of 5.7 per cent. Moreover, the ILO noted, less than 70 women are economically active for every 100 men globally. Remaining outside of the labour force is often not a choice but an imposition. It is likely that women would opt for remunerated work outside the home if it became acceptable to do so.

Noteworthy among other discoveries in the survey is the kind of young people that the YCW is in contact with. The figures show that these are the types of young people that the YCW movements are mostly in contact with which might also point to the composition of the YCW national movements’ membership.

These young people in the survey are the kinds of young people that the YCW wants to reach out as stated in paragraph 4 of Part One of the YCW’s Declaration of Principles. “The Y.C.W. Movement was founded to carry out a special mission amongst young men and women of working class culture. This means that the YCW has a preferential option for the kind of young people who are not highly advantaged financially or educationally, for those who live in the less well to do areas and find it hard to make their voice heard. It is for young workers of city and countryside, apprentices, those on vocational training courses, those with insecure jobs and the unemployed. It also includes the kind of young people who would like to make a commitment to this option and to the mission that the YCW offers”