Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

Today youth policy has turned into an important part of Azerbaijan's state policy. Azerbaijani youths are distinguished with their active roles in all sectors of public life including political, economic, humanitarian and social sectors. As a result of state policy, Azerbaijan's young men have been provided with considerable opportunities to press ahead with their dreams in life. This has made them a vanguard force in the society.

Azerbaijan has been recently included in the list of 41 countries with deep experiences in developing employment programs.

According to a report by the International Labour Organization, the youth unemployment rate in Azerbaijan radically decreased from 18.4% in 2010 down to 11% in 2013. With government's efforts to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the country, the overall unemployment rate of the country dropped down to as low as 5.4% in 2012, with unemployment benefits also continuing to fall.

The key goal of Azerbaijan's Youth Policy Law is the creation of necessary conditions for the physical, intellectual and spiritual developments of youths and finding practical solutions to their social problems.

Azerbaijan has also been a good example for socio-economic developments in the Muslim world in recent years, with the United Nations and World Bank both agreeing that the country has made significant progress in achieving its Millennium Development Goals.

Over the last year, the number of Azerbaijan's economically active population increased by 1.5 percent to 4,794 million till July 1, 2014.

Meanwhile, the number of employed people increased by 1.7 percent, reaching 4,556 million in this period.

Earlier, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Salim Muslimov said that in the first half of 2014 62,000 jobs have been created, 52,000 of which are permanent.

"Thereby the number of jobs created since 2003 until today, reached 1.3 million," Muslimov emphasized.