Joblessness matters for several reasons. First, it is miserable for those concerned. Second, it is a waste of human potential. Time spent e-mailing CVs or lying dejected on the sofa is time not spent fixing boilers, laying cables or building a business. Third, it is fiscally ruinous. If the young cannot get a foot on the career ladder, it is hard to see how in time they will be able to support the swelling number of pensioners. Fourth, joblessness can become self-perpetuating. The longer people are out of work, the more their skills and their self-confidence atrophy, the less appealing they look to potential employers and the more likely they are to give up and subsist on the dole.This “scarring” effect is worse if you are jobless when young, Over the next decade more than 1 billion young people will enter the global labour market, and only 40% will be working in jobs that currently exist, estimates the World Bank. Some 90% of new jobs are created by the private sector. The best thing for job creation is economic growth, so policies that promote growth are particularly good for the young. Removing regulatory barriers can aMaking it easier for young people to start their own business is essential, too. They may be full of energy and open to new ideas, but the firms they create are typically less successful than those launched by older entrepreneurs. The young find it harder to raise capital because they generally have a weaker credit history and less collateral. They usually also know less about the industry they are seeking to enter and have fewer contacts than their older peers. A survey by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor found that businesses run by entrepreneurs over the age of 35 were 1.7 times as likely to have survived for more than 42 months as those run by 25-34-year-olds.

Young sub-Saharan Africans show the greatest enthusiasm for starting their own business: 52% say they would like to, compared with only 19% in rich Western countries. This is partly because many have little choice. There are fewer good jobs available in poor countries, and in the absence of a welfare state few people can afford to do nothing. also boost job creation.Alas, there is a huge mismatch everywhere between the skills that many young people can offer and the ones that employers need.As economies grow more sophisticated, demand for cognitive skills will keep rising. The world’s schools are not even close to meeting it