I suppose we would say that it's so difficult to divorce the youth unemployment context from all of those factors.
Back when I was chairing the expert panel on youth employment, I was already hearing from young people about how they knew that rudimentary algorithmic systems were screening their CVs. They were using white font to put keywords from job postings into their cover letters and their résumés. That was a function of how technology was changing the search for labour. It drove down the cost of looking for a job. You didn't have to find a job posting in the newspaper or post it on a window. Everybody was applying for jobs from the couch, 24-7—you know what I mean—just online, and suddenly it was imposing a huge cost on employers as well. They were just inundated with interest from people, which leads to this disappointment in the hundreds of applications and disappointment that we hear from.... We can never divorce youth employment from the broader context. We know that young people are the last ones in the labour market and sort of the first ones out, but we want to be careful to not totally leave out how other technologies are changing the dynamics of that labour market, the demand for their labour and that interest in their uptake.
