by Mohammad Ghazal | Feb 23,2012 | JORDAN TIMES
AMMAN — Experts on Thursday called for effective short- and medium-term strategies to create jobs for young people in the Kingdom, where two-thirds of working-age youths are jobless.
They said investing in human capital is the key to boosting the country’s economy, and also called for providing incentives to the private sector to engage in the process of alleviating unemployment in the Kingdom.
“Jordan enjoys a demographic gift that is its young human capital. It is time to take advantage of this gift and use it within the next few years. Developing countries will never become developed unless they properly utilise their human capital,” Omar Razzaz, former director general of the Social Security Corporation, said Thursday.
“High growth in China, Korea and Germany is driven by the human capital in these countries. There is a need for immediate strategies to address the issue of unemployment in Jordan,” he added at the Youth@Work Partnerships for Skills Development conference, which concluded Thursday.
Razzaz, a former World Bank country manager for Lebanon, said two-thirds of workers in Jordan receive no more than JD350 as a monthly salary, noting that the Jordanian economy operates at about 33 per cent below its potential due to the weak participation of young Jordanians in the labour market.