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The global economic crisis has hit youth very hard. In the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) area, the youth (15-24) unemployment rate rose by 6 percentage points in the two years to the end of 2009, to reach almost 19 per cent. There are currently nearly 15 million youth unemployed in the OECD area, about four million more than at the end of 2007. And in countries like France and Italy, about one active youth in four is unemployed, while in Spain more than 40 per cent of them are jobless. After a review of youth labour market developments in the OECD countries and the identification of key underlying structural issues, this paper discusses what governments could do to minimise the possible scarring effects of the crisis on youth and thus avoid a lost generation. In the short term, a key policy priority is to provide adequate support especially to youth most at risk of losing contact with the labour market. A promising avenue is to promote more extensively apprenticeship contracts for low-skilled youth where they can acquire both skills and work experience. In fact, apprenticeships could pay a ‘double dividend’ by securing the transition towards employment and lowering labour costs compensated by a training commitment from the employer. In a downturn when employers are more reluctant to offer places and some apprentices lose their job before completing training, governments could provide subsidies to promote apprenticeship for unskilled young people and support measures to help apprentices made redundant to complete their training. The jobs crisis may also be an opportunity to tackle underlying factors affecting the transition from education to work. Further efforts should be made in many countries to ensure that no youth enters the labour market without a recognised and valued qualification. This may imply that teenagers should be encouraged to stay longer in education, provided that this is accompanied by measures to diversify educational choices and focuses on the acquisition of a qualification that is valued by employers. Securing the school-to-work transition should go hand-in-hand with lowering the cost of employing low-skilled youth in their first job. Show less