Canada’s youth fare better than most

OECD report finds 14% of young people are neither in workforce nor at school

Economic turmoil may have been pushing young people out of the workforce and sidelining them from their educational goals, but a report from the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development suggests Canada’s youth are faring better than most.

The organization’s Education at a Glance report found 14 per cent of Canadians between 15 and 29 years of age were neither employed nor in education training, a measure commonly referred to as NEET.

Canada’s numbers were below the international average of 16 per cent.

The report was based on figures available from 2008 to 2010 — and the OECD said those trends are likely still rising due to more recent economic turmoil.

Canada’s NEET youth were almost equally divided along gender lines, with boys only slightly more likely to find themselves outside either the education system or the labour force.

The NEET measurement from the OECD echoes findings from Statistics Canada released last May.

The country’s national data collection agency found only 13 per cent of the 6.8 million Canadian youth qualified as NEET, continuing a trend that has stayed more or less static for the past two decades.

The OECD had previously stated Canada had the second-lowest NEET rating among G7 countries.

Canada’s NEET rate was situated in the lower half of the report’s spectrum, but was higher than the figures for Netherlands and Luxembourg, which boasted NEET rates of seven per cent.

Turkey had the highest NEET rate at 37 per cent, a number that reflected the fact more than half the country’s women are excluded from both education and work.

The OECD report repeatedly stressed the need for governments to step up investment in education if they hope to limit inequality and improve employment prospects for their citizens.

“Countries need an increasingly educated and skilled workforce to succeed in today’s knowledge economy,” OECD secretary-general Angel Gurria said in a statement.

“Investing from an early age is crucial to lay the foundations of later success. High quality education and skills have to be among the numberone priorities … Supporting the poorest and ensuring equal access is another important pillar in an inclusive education policy.”

According to the report, the prospect of unemployment among the young is less dismal for those with more education. It found that higher education reduced joblessness by eight percentage points among 20-to-24-yearolds and 6.7 percentage points among 25-to-29-year-olds.

The report found one major reversal: young women, for the first time, are more likely than young men to finish high school, are outpacing men in entering university-level education and are catching up even in vocational schools.