Geneva: Nearly 75 million youths across the world will stay unemployed in 2012, said a report released today by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). This accounts for 12.7 percent of the global youth labour force aged 15 to 24. The number is an increase of four million since 2007, said Xinhua, citing the "Global Employment Trends for Youth 2012" report. The crisis-linked withdrawal from the labour market is particularly strong in developed economies, with an 18 percent youth unemployment rate being projected for this year, the report said. It said the rate would even be higher if one takes into account the 6.4 million youth worldwide who have either given up searching for a job or have decided to prolong their studies due to the extremely adverse conditions in the labour market. The rate is not expected to come down until at least 2016, the report said. Further pressure on unemployment rates is expected when those extending their stay in the education system because of limited job prospects eventually enter the labour market. "The youth unemployment crisis can be beaten but only if job creation for young people becomes a key priority in policy-making and private sector investment picks up significantly," said ILO Employment Sector executive director Jose Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs. "This includes measures such as offering tax and other incentives to enterprises who hire young people, efforts to reduce the skills mismatch among youth, entrepreneurship programmes that integrate skills training, mentoring and access to capital, and the improvement of social protection for the young," he said.