World Youth Skills Day 2019
World Youth Skills Day, what is it? Why is it important? Currently there are rising levels of youth unemployment across the world, with the UN viewing this problem as one of the most significant issues facing economies and societies today.
World Youth Skills Day is an awareness campaign to shine a light on this issue and spread awareness about the importance of young people joining the workforce.
According to the UN’s studies, young people are almost three times more likely to be unemployed than adults.
Young people are also more likely to be asked to do lower quality jobs, have greater labour market inequalities, and have a longer and more insecure school to work transition.
How does Australia fit into this? The unemployment crisis is affecting both developed and developing countries alike. Here in Australia, we are currently facing a national skills shortage in critical industries, including Civil Engineering, Electrical, Mechanical, Mining, Plumbing and Automotive. The official list is even longer and covers many different trade types that would require their future workers to have completed an apprenticeship or traineeship.
What is Australia doing to address these shortages? The Australian Government has implemented a program to help create and support up to 80,000 new apprenticeships and traineeships over the next five years. This new program is an important part of the Government’s $525 million package (‘Delivering Skills for Today and Tomorrow’) which is an investment that will upgrade and modernise Australia’s Vocational Education and Training (VET) Sector.
MIGAS’s role in this? MIGAS Apprentices & Trainees is a primary employer of young people. We want to see the young people we work with grow their skills and gain the experience that will set them up for the rest of their lives. That’s why World Youth Skills day is such an important occasion to us, it raises awareness of a massively important issue facing Australia – one that MIGAS has a direct hand in remedying.
We would also like to say how proud we are of all our current and past apprentices and trainees. They are all amazing, hardworking individuals who are helping support the future of Australia.