Sector Brief: Vocational Training, 2013

Shujog provides a brief insight on the value chain of the Social Enterprise (SE) vocational training sector in both South and Southeast Asia, highlighting the sector’s social impact, innovation, sustainability, and market trends. This report is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Summary

Asia and the Pacific has witnessed a high pace of growth over the last decades, with an average annual growth rate at 5.7% – more than 2 points higher than the world average. By contrast, growth of employment has been a mere 1.8% per year – an indication of the challenges related to structural and transitional unemployment in high-growth economies in the region. Asia-Pacific is confronted with a combined challenge of increasing youth unemployment and a lack of skilled workers. Global youth unemployment has increased by 14.8% from 1995 to 2005, with Asia and the Pacific region experiencing an 85.5% increase in youth unemployment in the same period. Unemployment affects women and youth disproportionately. Based on the statistics of UNESCAP, average unemployment rate for women from 1990 to 2010 was 7.1% while the figure for men was 5%. For youth aged between 15 and 24, the gender disparity is even larger.