A GLOBAL ANALYSIS OF LABOUR UNDERUTILIZATION AS A COMPLEMENTARY METRICS TO NEETs
This week, the International Labour Organization released the report World Employment and Social Outlook. Trends 2020 (https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/…).
One of the highlights of the report is the conceptualization and the detailed statistics on “Total Labour Underutilization”. This concept includes, besides unemployment, “two additional categories: people in work who would like to work more paid hours (“time-related underemployment”), and people out of employment who would like to work but whose personal situation or other factors prevent them from actively searching for a job and/or being available for work (“the potential labour force”)” (see page Figure 1.1 in 19 of the report).
As such, this is an alternative or rather a complement to the NEET category (widely used also by the ILO, specifically for youth), which includes all working age population (whether or not they want to work), but excludes those who are in training or education but would wish to work if a job would be available. So “labour underutilization” is based on people’s desire to work (i.e., in access to paid work) rather than on objective circumstances (age and status).
Globally, according to the ILO total youth labour underutilization rate amounts to 26% of the youth extended labour force (10.8% of the extended labour force for adults), whereas youth NEET rate amounts to 22%. Highest labour underutilization rates worldwide are for women in North Africa and in the Arab States, affecting around 40 per cent of women in the extended labour force in both subregions (compared with 20 and 12 per cent of men, respectively, see Figure 1.8 in page 31). Overall, women in rural areas are faced with a wider gender gap than those in urban areas.
The report provides separate analysis for a series of country income groups and sub-regions (partner countries of ETF are distributed among North Africa, “Arab States” (including Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria), “Eastern Europe” and “Central and Western Asia” (see country groupings in page 80 of the report). Country-by-country statistics can be searched at https://ilostat.ilo.org/topics/unemployment-and-labour-underutilization/
Beyond the analysis of labour underutilization, the report also provides an analysis of Global employment and social trends and a focus on paid work and “the problem of decent work”, as well as a specific analysis of the assessment of inequality using labour income statistics. It also provides an extensive statistical appendix by country income group and by country sub-regions, including a revision of historical estimates for a comprehensive set of indicators (employment to population ratio, labour force participation rate, unemployment rate, time-related underemployment and composite rate of labour underutilization).