The labor situation for young Peruvians, aged 18 to 29 years old, is rather complex.

The first question one should ask is what young people are doing. According to the Ministry of Labor and Employment Promotion of Peru, 46.2% work, 21% study, 11.5% study and work, and 21.3% neither work nor study. This means that 1,711,881 youngsters are neither in the education system nor the labor market. Around 1,085,000 are women and 629,000 are men.

Among those young Peruvians that work, 78% do so under informal conditions.

In addition, the unemployment rate is way higher among young people (8.4%) than among adults (2.3%).

In order to start addressing the situation, the executive power is working on a bill to promote youth employment. According to this project, the State will pay for the healthcare contributions of young employees, which will expand social security coverage among young people who currently are completely in informality.

Furthermore, the bill aims at ensuring labor rights, such as vacations leave, dismissal protection, bonuses; as well as union trade rights, and labor safety and healthcare rights.

The goal of the bill is to promote the creation of new jobs for young people who are from 18 to 29 years old. The requisites they need to fulfill in order to access the program is to be looking for their first job, or having spent six months in unemployment, and/or under informal conditions.

Moreover, the bill forbids companies to hire young people under this program to replace current workers. Therefore, the company must demonstrate that it is creating new jobs, increasing the value and size of its payroll.

Source: Gestión