It would seem that young people have very little to celebrate this year on International Youth Day – the pandemic has forced millions of pupils out of education, isolated them from their friends and peers, taken away their jobs and given them very little certainty for the future.

'The younger you are, the more likely you are to lose your job.'

A survey published this week by the International Labor Organization (ILO) showed that at the peak of the pandemic in April, the crisis had a drastic effect on youth employment.

"Young people, we found that 18 percent of them, so one in six, lost their job as a result of the pandemic," says Drew Gardiner from the ILO. "There were also quite severe reductions in young people's income, in their productivity and their working hours."

Young people's working hours were also reduced, by a quarter. "If you think about an eight-hour workday, people were working on average two hours less per day during the survey period," says Gardiner.

Looking at different age groups that responded to the survey, the ILO found there was a correlation between the impact of the pandemic on the labor market and age. "The younger you are, the more likely you are to lose your job," explains Gardiner. 

Whereas 23 percent of people aged 18-24 have lost their job during the pandemic, that was true for about only 11 percent for those aged 30-34.

"This is due to the last-in-first-out phenomenon," says Gardiner. "The last person to be hired in a business is usually the first person to then be fired. And this is young people in the end, because they have less work experience, they have maybe just recently come onto the job market."

How is Europe dealing with the sharp rise in youth unemployment?

The ILO report found, unsurprisingly, that high-income countries were doing better than lower-income ones. Among the first group, Europe promptly responded to the emergency, offering wage support. "The issue is that most young people aren't working, they're studying," says Gardiner. "So a lot of those income-support measures were targeted at employees, not necessarily those who were out of work or those who were studying.

"And I think that's what a lot of young people and organizations who are representing young people are fighting for, just to say students also need those measures."

In response to the pandemic, the European Commission extended its Youth Guarantee scheme – launched in 2013 to support the smooth transition of young people into the job market – to people aged up to 29, from its initial 18-24 target.

Since 2014, of the more than 5 million young people who registered for the scheme, 3.5 million accepted an offer of employment, continued education, apprenticeship or traineeship. The project had managed to decrease youth unemployment from a peak of 24 percent in 2013 to 14 percent in 2019. In June 2020, the youth unemployment rate was back to 16.8 percent in the EU and 17 percent in the eurozone.

Gender divide: Jobless men, less productive women

Another surprising finding in the ILO survey was that, while more men lost their job in the immediate term as a result of the pandemic, more women reported being less productive during the lockdown.

"There's a lot of segmentation between the jobs that women do and the jobs that men do," says Gardiner. "And, in fact, women work more in occupations that are considered essential than men do."

Young women who self-assessed themselves as less productive while working from home mirror a phenomenon that has been reported in all age cohorts and has to do with women being the primary caregiver for children and, even in 2020, taking on most household chores.

School closures: Losing skills and struggling with mental health

The negative impact of the pandemic on the job market is also likely to affect the future employability of young people – three in four young are facing school closures and report that during lockdown they have been learning less or nothing at all. This is especially relevant for those students who can't afford remote learning and for whom education has been simply postponed.

"The more education and training you can get, the better likelihood you are to find a decent job," explains Gardiner. 

With studies being delayed, the so-called "lockdown generation" will enter the job market after a significant delay, which will still affect their livelihoods when they're in their thirties and forties.

Reopening schools is not only a priority for the continuity of young people's education, but also to guarantee young people the level of interaction with their peers that would normally support their wellbeing. The ILO report found that a staggering 50 percent of those surveyed were experiencing anxiety or depression. "And the reality is that you won't be able to study or work productively if you suffer from mental health issues," says Gardiner. "So then that affects your chances of getting jobs and graduating from school."

Celina Chien, who just graduated from Imperial College London with a degree in Biological Science., said: "I'm twenty one now and I'm just finishing university. A lot of my friends were supposed to enter the workforce, but now, with COVID-19, it's just absolutely chaotic for us. 

"It feels - because of the amount of uncertainty in our lives as individuals, both, you know, for environmental reasons and for pandemic reasons and all these related problems, instead of feeling like anxiety all the time, it's just like this overhanging cloud of angst."

Is there hope for young people?

Amid this crisis, hundreds of positive stories of youth engagement and resilience have emerged. In line with this year's theme "Youth engagement for global action," young people around the world have been the first to mobilize to show solidarity and take action amid the global health emergency, correcting fake news and spreading accurate information on the virus.

When taking to the streets to protest about the climate crisis was made too risky by the virus, young environmental activists kept fighting online, turning #climatestrike into #climatestrikeonline.

Chien is 21, but even at her relatively young age she's already achieved so much: she's a biologist, a conservationist and a photojournalist. "They call me an activist, but I wouldn't really call myself a climate activist."

For Chien, there's so much more to it: she talks about a biodiversity crisis, for which there's not really an activist label. "I was born with this innate love for the environment," she says. A passion that has taken shape in her photography and her tireless work with several NGOs, including youth-led NGO Reserva, which is trying to create the world's first entirely youth-funded nature reserve.

Chien advocates for online activism: "Most people under 18 don't have a vote yet. And so the only way people can really express themselves and make themselves heard by their governments is by either protesting or by posting online.

"You have a whole generation of people who have grown up with Google at their fingertips," says Chien. "And by talking about it online and trying, you know, sharing petitions and things like that and just doing the things, even if it's as small as sharing something online or on your story on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, it's better than not doing anything."

But having their voices heard is hard for young people. Chien admits that sometimes, especially on social media where the algorithm favors the creation of like-minded "echo-chambers," where activism feels like "shouting into the abyss."

Gardiner agrees with her: "We don't listen to this generation enough," he says. "Young people should have a voice at policymaking and in decision-making and are not being consulted and considered enough."

The director-general of the World Health Organization sent a strong message in this direction during a webinar celebrating International Youth Day. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged organizations, institutions and governments to listen to and empower young adults, especially as disease outbreaks may become more common in the future. "We have to give young people a larger role in political decision-making. Their voices often go unheard, even though over half of the world's population is under 35 years old. Their engagement is essential as we confront the health challenges of today and the future."

He also said that the world has counted on their creativity and fresh ideas of young people during the pandemic and thanked the young health professionals who have been on the front lines in hospitals, health centers and testing clinics.  

What's ahead for youth?

While the future feels uncertain and like an "overhanging cloud," Chien is not giving up on her work, or her dreams. In the fall she will start her master's degree in Tropical Forest Ecology – partly in person, partly remotely – and, though her trip to Borneo was cancelled because of the pandemic, she's found a local project in London, studying the tropical parrots she has spotted at Primrose Hill.

"It's very easy to feel hopeless about the future of the planet and especially now that it's becoming more and more urgent," she says. "It's all about finding the people who are solutions-oriented, who have this feeling of hope. There's no other choice than to be hopeful. You know, if I wasn't hopeful, then I wouldn't try to change anything. It's very defeatist. And to say like, 'Oh, there's no hope for anything. I'm just going to forget about trying to make a difference and try to focus on myself and try to live my best life as an individual,' which I think tends to happen as people get older.

"There's definitely hope for the future of our planet and for our people."

Video editing: Natalia Luz. Additional reporting: Toni Waterman