DEEP Centre president and co-founder Anthony Williams was recently in Toronto to keynote the annual Youth Employment Leadership Summit, organized by FirstWork. In the keynote, Anthony discussed a series of demographic, technological and economic transformations that are reshaping labour markets on a global basis and argued for bold new approaches to solve an unemployment crisis that is affecting nearly 300 million young people around the world.
Here’s a synopsis of the talk:
From the entry of billions of new skilled individuals into the global workforce to the acceleration of artificial intelligence and automation, profound economic and technological transformations are resulting in some fundamental changes in today’s labour markets–changes that will continue to reshape the environment in which young people are seeking jobs. These include changes in the nature of work; changes to the kinds of skills that are in demand; changes in the salaries that young workers can command; and changes in the kind of entities that offer meaningful and lucrative employment opportunities.
Large multinational companies and government are important employers, but they are not the primary engines of new job creation. The primary job creators are entrepreneurial firms on a growth trajectory – which are responsible for at least 80% of new jobs. We’ve seen a significant rise in self-employment, freelancing and entrepreneurship and thankfully there are powerful new tools to help entrepreneurs be successful.
Entrepreneurship alone, however, is not a complete solution to youth unemployment. There is a significant segment of the population of young people that do not have the skills, nor the tools required to succeed in a more entrepreneurial economy. We need new approaches to skills training and new networks to support entrepreneurial activity.
The first priority is to build networks that can bring the right combination of skills and resources together to solve some of underlying challenges associated with youth unemployment. We need a less fragmented and collaborative approach, one that draws on the strengths of each sector – one where resources are shared and where various actors from across disciplines and sectors contribute complementary assets, perspectives and skills.