【英譯漢】

Youth unemployment across the world has climbed to a new high and is likely to climb further this year, a United Nations agency said Thursday, while warning of a “lost generation” as more young people give up the search for work.

The agency, the International Labor Organization, said in a report that of some 620 million young people ages 15 to 24 in the work force, about 81 million were unemployed at the end of 2009 — the highest level in two decades of record-keeping by the organization, which is based in Geneva.

The youth unemployment rate increased to 13 percent in 2009 from 11.9 percent in the last assessment in 2007.

“There’s never been an increase of this magnitude — both in terms of the rate and the level — since we’ve been tracking the data,” said Steven Kapsos, an economist with the organization. The agency forecast that the global youth unemployment rate would continue to increase through 2010, to 13.1 percent, as the effects of the economic downturn continue. It should then decline to 12.7 percent in 2011.

The agency’s 2010 report found that unemployment has hit young people harder than adults during the financial crisis, from which most economies are only just emerging, and that recovery of the job market for young men and women will lag behind that of adults. The impact of the crisis also has been felt in shorter hours and reduced wages for those who maintain salaried employment.

In some especially strained European countries, including Spain and Britain, many young people have become discouraged and given up the job hunt, it said. The trend will have “significant consequences for young people,” as more and more join the ranks of the already unemployed, it said. That has the potential to create a “ ‘lost generation’ comprised of young people who have dropped out of the labor market, having lost all hope of being able to work for a decent living.”

The report said that young people in developing economies are more vulnerable to precarious employment and poverty.

About 152 million young people, or a quarter of all the young workers in the world, are employed but remain in extreme poverty in households surviving on less than $1.25 a person a day in 2008, the report said.

“The number of young people stuck in working poverty grows, and the cycle of working poverty persists,” the agency’s director-general, Juan Somavia, said.

Young women still have more difficulty than young men in finding work, the report added. The female youth unemployment rate in 2009 stood at 13.2 percent, compared with the male rate of 12.9 percent. The gap of 0.3 percentage point was the same as in 2007.

The report studied the German, British, Spanish and Estonian labor markets and found that Germany had been most successful in bringing down long-term youth unemployment. In Spain and Britain, increases in unemployment were particularly pronounced for those with lower education levels.

Data from Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical agency, show Spain had a jobless rate of 40.5 percent in May for people under 25. That was the highest level among the 27 members of the European Union, far greater than the 9.4 percent in Germany in May and 19.7 percent in Britain in March.

【參考譯文】

聯合國一組織周二稱，全球年輕人失業率再創新高，而且這種趨勢將在今年繼續延續下去。他們警告說，越來越多的年輕人放棄尋找工作，將導致失迷一代數量激增。

國際勞工組織在其報告中稱，全球15歲到24歲之間的6.2億年輕工人中，2009年末大約有8100萬人失業，這是總部位于日內瓦的勞工組織20年以來的最高紀錄。

年輕人失業率從2007年的11.9%增長到2009年的13%。

國際勞工組織經濟學家史蒂文·凱普索斯說：“自從我們開始追蹤年輕人失業數據以來，從未見過數量如此之大、比例如此之高的失業現象。”該機構預測，在全球經濟持續低迷的影響下，年輕人2010年下半年失業率將繼續上升，最后可能達到13.1%。不過到2011年，這一比例應該可以降到12.7%以下。

國際勞工組織2010年的報告還發現，金融危機期間，年輕人失業率比成年工人失業情況更嚴重，就業市場的恢復也比成年工人慢。而且受經濟危機影響，僥幸保住“飯碗”的年輕人，工作時間更短、工資更少。

在情況特別嚴峻的歐洲國家，比如西班牙和英國，許多年輕人已經對尋找工作氣餒，甚至放棄了找工作。這種趨勢將對年輕人造成嚴重影響，可能越來越多的年輕人加入到失業者行列。這些退出勞動市場、對尋找工作過上體面生活失去希望的年輕人，將成為新的迷失一代。

報告稱，發展中國家的年輕人更容易受到失業影響，重新變得貧困。

報告稱，2008年，大約1.52億年輕人(全球年輕工人四分之一)找到工作，但是他們依然十分貧困，每個家庭每人每天的生活花費不到1.25美元。

國際勞工組織總干事索馬維亞說：“掙扎于工作貧困中的年輕人數量正在增加,工作貧困的循環也在繼續。”

在找工作方面，年輕女性遇到的困難的男性更多。2009年年輕女性失業率已經高達13.2%，同期男性失業率為12.9%。2007年，年輕男女失業率差異也在0.3%左右。

報告研究了德國、英國、西班牙以及愛沙尼亞等國的勞動市場，發現德國在處理年輕人長期失業方面最成功。西班牙和英國，那些受教育程度低的年輕人失業率增長明顯。

來自歐盟統計局的數據顯示，5月份，西班牙25歲以下人口失業率已經達到40.5%，這是歐盟27個成員國中比例最高的。德國5月恩的失業率為9.4%，英國3月失業率為19.7%。