Why are youth unemployment statistics internationally controversial?

In fact, there has been a long-standing international controversy over the statistical caliber and practical significance of the youth unemployment rate as a statistical indicator. The age range, which is difficult to define with precision, and the difficulty of reflecting actual employment in the youth unemployment rate itself are the main reasons why this statistical indicator is also controversial at the international level.

Youth can be defined both physiologically as the life stage between adolescence and adulthood and as a socially constructed group with its own subculture. Considering that youth is not understood in the same way in different cultural circles, it is also difficult to establish a clear definition of the age range of youth on a global scale.

For example, according to the United Nations, youth is defined as a population group between the ages of 15 and 24, which is also the standard used by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Eurostat, on the other hand, uses two different definitions, 15 to 24 and 15 to 29. In addition, Eurostat also publishes from time to time the unemployment situation of the 15 to 19 age group.

According to the Loughborough University paper "Youth Employment in a Globalized World," at least six countries in sub-Saharan Africa define youth as being between the ages of 15 and 30, which is very different from the UN definition. According to Japan's labor policy, youth is even defined as the 15 to 34 age group.

On the other hand, the lack of clarity on the definition of unemployment and the low labor force participation rate of the youth group make the youth unemployment rate an indicator that may deviate significantly from the actual job market situation.

Eurostat has written that the youth unemployment rate does not reflect the proportion of unemployed youth in the youth population. For example, a youth unemployment rate of 25% does not mean that one in four young people is unemployed.

According to the general definition, the unemployment rate is the ratio of the unemployed population to the active labor force, where the active labor force includes both the unemployed population and the employed population. As defined by the International Labor Organization, the employed population is those who worked for wages, profit, or household income during the survey week, even if they actually worked only one hour per week. Special circumstances such as sick leave, vacation, or being caught in a labor dispute are still included in the employed population. The unemployed, on the other hand, are defined as those who are not working but are willing and able to work and are actively seeking work.

The vagueness of the definition of the unemployed and the fact that the active labor force does not cover the majority of the youth population are the main problems with this definition.

UNESCO has pointed out that the youth unemployment rate does not reflect the "invisible" groups of young women in the labor market. For example, young women with educational backgrounds and professional skills may not be counted among the unemployed because they are not actively seeking work for cultural reasons.

Eurostat also points out that the proportion of young people who are not counted as active in the labor force for a variety of reasons, including education, is significantly higher than in all-age data. For example, groups of young people who avoid entering the job market even by extending their years of education are not included in either the numerator or the denominator of unemployment statistics. Lower levels of labor market participation among young people can lead to situations where youth unemployment remains high even though the number of unemployed is limited.

For this reason Eurostat suggests that the use of the unemployment rate should be complemented by the introduction of the unemployment ratio, which directly uses the entire youth population aged 15 to 29 years old as the denominator, instead of the labor force active population in the former.

It is worth noting that the difference between the youth unemployment rate and the youth unemployment ratio also reflects the extent to which the employment situation of young people differs from that of the population as a whole. Eurostat, by definition, states that the youth unemployment ratio is about half of the youth unemployment rate, but it shows great differences between different EU Member States.

For example, in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Malta and the Netherlands, the difference between the youth unemployment rate and the youth unemployment share is only 3 percentage points, whereas the difference between the two indicators is more than 13 percentage points in countries such as Greece, Spain and Italy.

In the 1980s, American universities published several papers pointing out that Japan's youth unemployment rate, then in its golden age, was much lower than that of the United States not because of an economic miracle, but rather as a statistical trick to hide the real situation. These included the fact that Japan's strict years of education and low minimum wage had lowered the labor market participation rate of Japanese youth.