The power of data is growing. Business strategies and improvements in all types of products and services rely on the mass analysis of data. In this regard, the ILO and the Mastercard Foundation have launched a project to provide comprehensive data at the national level on the situation of young people in the labour market, including indicators relating to the transition from education to work.
Throughout this one-year project, the Mastercard Foundation will support the ILO in establishing the new YouthSTATS database, which will be updated regularly. This database was developed for the first time by the ILO as part of its collaboration with the Mastercard Foundation’s Work4Youth project, which ended in 2014.
The database will provide a comprehensive set of indicators on the labour market situation of 15-29-year-olds and will constitute a central repository of international statistical data on the youth labour market.
Data from more than 140 countries
The ILO has the largest international register of microdata sets on workforce surveys, which include information about individuals and households used to compile official domestic statistical data. In recent years, the ILO Department of Statistics has invested heavily in collecting more than 9,000 microdata sets on national workforce surveys in more than 140 countries.
“One of the main advantages of incorporating YouthSTATS indicators into the ILO microdatabase is to facilitate the generation of long-term disaggregated data, particularly with respect to variables regarding age, sex, economic or industrial activity, formal or informal sectors, profession or academic level. Disaggregated data will, in turn, provide detailed information on the challenges faced by particular population groups,” said Steven Kapsos, head of the ILO’s Data Production and Analysis Unit.
“The groundbreaking work of the surveys on the transition from formal education to work revealed the importance of understanding how young people around the world perceive this key transitional period,” said Lindsay Wallace, director of strategy and learning programmes at the Mastercard Foundation. “We are pleased that the ILO is able to make this information permanently available to decision-makers at global, regional and national levels”.
