Youth unemployment

Youth unemployment is the situation of young people who are looking for a job but cannot find a job, with the age range being defined by the United Nations as 15–24 years old. An unemployed person is defined as someone who does not have a job but is actively seeking one. To be qualified as unemployed for official and statistical measurement, the individual must be without employment, willing and able to work, of the officially designated "working age" (often from the teens to the mid-60s) and actively searching for a position. Youth unemployment rates tend to be higher than adult rates in every country in the world. Youth unemployment has largely been described as a major, if not the primary catalyst for revolution, political and, societal upheaval, and, conflict towards the system and, state. It has historically been associated with upheaval and change or overthrow of the political establishment and mass societal change, with conflicts such as the Arab Spring, Russian civil war and the French revolution all largely being caused by large scale youth unemployment. There are 1.2 billion youth in the world aged between 15 and 24, accounting for 17% of the world's population. 87% of them live in developing countries. The age range defined by the United Nations addresses the period when mandatory schooling ends until the age of 24. This definition remains controversial as it not only impacts unemployment statistics but also plays an important role in the targeted solutions designed by policy makers in the world. Two main debates are ongoing today. First, defining the age range of youth is not as obvious as it seems. Two theoretical perspectives have dominated this debate. Youth can be seen as a stage in life between adolescence and adulthood or as a socially constructed group with its own sub-culture, making it difficult to establish a comparable age range between countries. Second, the definition of unemployment itself leads to the possibility of not accounting for a number of young people left out of work.