The goal is to help 23,507 young people join the labour market each year ( 22,087 in the private sector and 1,430 in the public sector) in order to meet the target by 2021
The Government of Ecuador wants to help 60,000 of its young people, aged 18 to 26, to join the labour market by 2021. According to the Ministry of Employment, the Government will provide more than 250,000 employers with an incentive to hire.
At the end of last month, Minister Raúl Ledesma indicated that the state will assume 50% of the salary and an equal percentage of the fees businesses have to pay to the national insurance system for workers hired for the first time. The beneficiaries of this action will be young people who have not completed their studies. The sectors in which young people are a majority (up to 66%) will receive priority treatment, such as agriculture (24%), trade (20%), manufacturing (13%) and construction (9%).
Another programme promoted by the Ecuadorian Government focuses on work experience. The initiative consists in reimbursing businesses 100% of the salary paid to young people on these programmes, once they have completed six months of work experience and if the company decides to hire them The Government is also seeking to strengthen the My First Job project, which already existed in the previous term. This project seeks to help young graduates or students in their last year of higher education to find their first job.
The goal is to help 23,507 young people join the labour market each year (22,087 in the private sector and 1,430 in the public sector). The Treasury will allocate about USD 270 million to these programmes. With these actions, the Government seeks to reduce youth employment by 3.45% until 2021, achieving an unemployment rate of 6.98%. In September last year, the unemployment rate for people aged 15 to 24 stood at 38.9%.