نگاهي به جوانان علاف در ايران

A View to Idle Youth in Iran

In countries suffering insufficient growth of employment, considerable amount of unemployment and underemployment, young people experience difficulties, disappointment and despair more than other age groups. They are, in all probability, more susceptible to a socio-economic suspense and an uncertain future. However for explaining youth situation in labor market and predicting the amount of employment opportunity they need, usually we use youth unemployment rate and especially the extent of this rate, compared to adultʹs rate of unemployment. But in fact this indicator is insufficient in that it reflects only a part of potential youth labor that is not utilized due to economic circumstances or other reasons. The hidden part of reserved youth labor consists of inactive youth that are not in education but due to unavailability of proper requirements, and in some case even despite of willingness or availability for pay work, they do not enter the labor market and thus remain inactive. Therefore, in addition to unemployed youth, the inactive youth that remains inactive involuntary for any reason, should be considered as a vulnerable part of a countryʹs young population and to regard their total share in the population as an approximate portion of unutilized potential youth labor. This paper attempts to define the part of countryʹs youth population that could not normally transit from school to work and by describing socioeconomic characteristics of this subgroup of youth, the paper will draw a picture of neglected part of potential youth labor. In so doing, it will use an indicator as the rate of youth who are inactive and yet not in education. This indicator is called ʹidle youthʹ in international labor market literature and is considered as a proxy of inactive part of vulnerable youth. Accordingly, individual and household information regarding youth aged 15-24 years obtained from population and householdsʹ census of 2006 has been analyzed. Findings are indicative that about 30 percent of countryʹs youth are idle namely they neither are in education, nor are employed and have stopped seeking work. This indicates wasting of a considerable part of the countryʹs best human capital.