Young Brazilians who neither work nor attend school make up nearly 20 percent of the country's residents aged 15 to 24, the Inter Press Service News Agency reported Jan. 8.
This number reflects a growing trend of Latin American youth that experts fear are not substantially integrated into society. Seven million Brazilians and nearly 800,000 Argentineans do not work and are not in school.
Experts attribute this to a limited labor market and decreased quality of public education. It is a worrisome factor, they say, because this high number of unattached youths contributes to greater violence and poverty.
Implementing long-term education plans must be a top priority, said Jorge Werthein, director of the Latin American Technological Information Network, which commissioned the report on youth development. Creating more jobs and other policies to bring young people into society also will alleviate the problem.
Read the IPS story here.
Source: Inter Press Service News Agency
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This is true, but it seems Brazil may be taking a step in the right direction. I know from the experiences of some friends that many times, upon finishing university at least, they can't get a job because they "don't have experience" (a ridiculous argument, both because of course they don't - they just graduated; and because, if they don't get it SOMEWHERE, how will they EVER get employed in their field?).
Lula has apparently (quietly) initiated a program that gets recent university graduates into internship programs doing things such as teaching and working on national historical restoration projects (among many other items) to give them the work experience that is demanded of them. So hopefully this is a step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done, certainly.
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