YOUTH unemployment is a “ticking timebomb” that will explode across the world on a massive scale over the next decade causing social and political unrest, an MPs’ committee report released today warns.

About 600 million youths are estimated to enter the global job market over the next 10 years but there will only be some 200m jobs awaiting them, the international development committee predicts.

The MPs say that the shortage of full-time jobs and the difficulty that rapidly increasing populations of young people face in earning a living represent “one of the greatest problems” of the coming decade.

“No-one — not national governments nor donor agencies — is doing enough to defuse the ticking timebomb of youth unemployment in developing countries,” said committee chairman Sir Malcolm Bruce.

“The complacent assumptions about population growth slowing are being proven wrong and we need to see that this is now a situation that needs to be addressed with the same kind of passion as children’s vaccinations or humanitarian emergencies.”

The committee calls on the government to address the need for jobs in developing countries through its aid spending.

But its members say that the Department for International Development may not be “sufficiently prepared” to fulfil plans to spend £1.8 billion on economic development by 2015-16 — more than doubling the amount spent in 2012-13.

The report also calls for a focus on supporting labour-intensive sectors such as agriculture, backing the extension of social security programmes for workers in the informal economy and teaching young people the entrepreneurial skills they will need to become self-employed.

by Our News Desk