Youth unemployment directly connected to poor school-to-work transition | Daily News

Youth unemployment directly connected to poor school-to-work transition

Unemployed youth
Unemployed youth

Verité Research, supported from the USAID funded YouLead programme, released a thought-provoking report and recommendation in their Youth Labour Market Assessment 2018.

The study has revealed several interesting insights on Sri Lanka’s youth unemployment. The year-long quantitative research focused on determining the key issues that impede youth employability, while providing recommendations to address systemic constraints.

Research shared the research findings with the public and private sector, NGOs, INGOs and academia.

The report is intended for general use and is accessible to anyone trying to address education or employment issues, whether an employer was attempting to hire young people, a training institute, an NGO, government agency or any other organisation. The Youth Labour Market Assessment 2018 and data sets could be accessed and downloaded via the following link; https://www.veriteresearch.org/publication/youth-labour-market-assessmen...

Verité Research’s research identifies the emerging trends in youth employment, while providing key insights to readers on how to formulate progressive strategies to advance youth employability in Sri Lanka. The country presently faces an enormous labour scarcity in several fast-growing industries including tourism, construction and healthcare. This is even though five million women and 70% of all youth are out of the labour force.

The assessment also notes that youth unemployment in Sri Lanka is directly connected to poor school-to-work transition. The research focused on employed, unemployed and constrained youth, the gender dimension of the labour market landscape, youth entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship training. Primary data was gathered through surveys of 2,000 youth, 223 employers, five key informant interviews and a survey of 400 students who underwent entrepreneurship training at the National Apprenticeship and Industrial Training Authority (NAITA), Industrial Development Board (IDB), National Enterprise Development Authority (NEDA) and the Small Enterprise Development Division (SED).

The research found that youth aspire to jobs that complement their existing skills and facilitate safe working environments. It also found that youth spent an average 21 months searching for employment and approximately 29% of constrained youth showed an interest to work. Women were found to be three times more likely to remain in their jobs, while transportation was a priority when looking for an occupation regardless of gender. The assessment presents a new index, the ‘Youth Gender Gap Index’ (YGGI), which measures gender inequality in the provinces and portrays data on district and provincial level by gender. This would allow YouLead to consider expanding its geographical reach to cover vulnerable areas of the island such as the Uva Province. It also shows that 20% of women who leave work for family reasons, for childcare or care giving, would wish to have return to work programmes to renter the work force. It makes a cogent empirical evidence-based argument that women are far more loyal in staying at workplaces. It also shows that if companies factor in the replacement value of a job, it is men who constantly jump jobs and cost more to companies by around 50% of their pay scale. This is despite a pattern of some women dropping out during the early years of childbearing. This makes women far easier to retain than popular perception dictates. The assessment also puts the new business start-up rate at 19% among youth who have undergone entrepreneurial training and showed that there is gap between curriculum delivered and entrepreneur needs.


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