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This chapter uses discourse analysis to explain why entrepreneurship has become a primary response to Africa’s youth employment challenge. It analyses almost 20 years of academic literature and publications from one of the world’s foremost authorities on entrepreneurship: the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). The study found that youth were positioned within a discourse of entrepreneurial essentialism; where entrepreneurship was narrativised as the only option for youth employment; and youth were framed as entrepreneurship being the natural solution for them. Youth were concurrently framed within numerous contradictory entrepreneurial discourses which were used to elevate and legitimise entrepreneurship as the key pathway for addressing Africa’s youth employment challenge. An important finding in this study was that the dominant model of entrepreneurship being promoted by GEM to address the challenge is a mainly skills-based pathway to self-employment and low-growth microenterprise development. This is concerning for two reasons: firstly, global evidence does not demonstrate much support for such an approach, and secondly, it undermines other responses to youth unemployment, particularly those which seek to address more structural, demand-side barriers to employment.

Creating employment opportunities for the youth remains a dilemma for policymakers. In many cases, policies and programmes to tackle youth unemployment have produced little results, because such initiatives have failed to consider some fundamental inputs. In Ghana, youth unemployment rate has doubled or more than doubled the national average unemployment rate in recent years. The current study, therefore, examines how policies in the past two decades have affected youth unemployment rate and other development outcomes.

The study reviewed national economic development policy documents from 1996 to 2017 and other relevant policies aimed at creating employment opportunities for the youth, applying the content analysis procedure. Four main policy documents were reviewed in this regard. Data from secondary sources including International Labour Organisation (ILO), World Bank (WB), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) were analysed to examine the trends in youth unemployment rate, human development index and GDP growth rate in Ghana over the years. There were also formal and informal consultations with youth and development practitioners.

The results of the study show that policies that promote general growth in the economy reduce youth unemployment, while continuation of existing youth programmes, expansion, as well as addition of new ones by new governments reduces youth unemployment rate. In particular, GDP growth and youth unemployment rate trend in opposite direction; periods of increased growth have reduced youth unemployment rate and vice versa. The period of Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda I & II witnessed better reduction (5.7%) in youth unemployment rate than any of the policy periods. This was not sustained, and despite the current youth employment initiatives, unemployment among young people still remained higher than the national average.

The study provides relevant information on how development policies and programmes affect youth unemployment rate over time. In as much as it is not the interest of the study, the study stops short of empirical estimation to determine the level of GDP growth rate that can reduce a particular level of youth unemployment, which is a case for further research. Nevertheless, the outcome of the study reflects the data and methodology used.

To the best of the knowledge of the authors, this is a first study in Ghana that has attempted to directly link development outcomes such as youth unemployment to national economic development policies, although there are studies that have analysed the policy gaps and implementation challenges. This paper, therefore, bridges the knowledge of how development policies affect youth employment opportunities, particularly for Ghana.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the key global challenges relating to youth employment and consider some ways that they may be addressed to allow their inclusion in the contemporary workplace. Also, the paper provides a brief introduction and rationale for the other five articles comprising this special issue volume.

The approach concerns a review of the relevant literature and reports on the topic.

The challenges outlined in this paper and the others in this special issue volume emphasise the need for much more work to be done to address the current global challenges relating to youth unemployment. It points to: the difficulties many young workers face in taking the first step towards gaining employment; the need for stakeholder collaboration towards future policy investment as well as strategy implementation and integration.

To date, much of the research that has been conducted on the challenges of youth employment and inclusion appears to have focussed on Europe and the USA. This special issue volume includes countries that have been less researched to date: Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritius, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, thus adding to current understanding of the topic in those contexts.

Kenya leads East Africa in creative goods export and enjoys high internet penetration. Therefore, identifying pathways, missed opportunities for accelerating job creation and development in the sector and strategies for mitigating youth-related challenges are essential. This paper therefore aims to examine the effects of digital media and the cultural and creative industry (CCI) on youth employment and economic development.

The document review and analysis data came from 45 scientific and 23 grey literature articles. While the lack of primary data is a study limitation, secondary data were drawn from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Statistics and the 2016–2022 entertainment and media outlook analysis. Microsoft Excel 2021 for Windows was used to analyze quantitative data and generate results.

Since the CCI sector is characterized by limited financial opportunities, low youth participation in the labor force and weak policy frameworks, success in the industry requires key pathways. These include investment in digital-led innovations, developing innovative models, building partnerships with the private sector, strategic investment by government in the potential creative industry sub-sectors and identifying successful scaling-up models.

Information gathered through this study is crucial to counter the youth unemployment challenge and strategy identification, which could be used in skills and capabilities development in the potential creative economy. Future researchers must explore how to apply the proposed creative capacity theoretical lens to inform research in the sector.

Currently, there is widespread consensus that training is helpful to the long-term success of business competitive advantages. However, youth continue to invest in various self-employment business options with low quality of short term trainings. The purpose of this study was to understand the competency level, training need and the role of training to business survival.

This study examined the training needs of youth engaged in self-employment and validated its role in sustainable business performance using primary data. To determine training needs, data were analysed using effect size, and probit model was used to understand the predictive validity of training gap to business performance.

This study has strong evidence that youth engaged in self-employment career have low entrepreneurial competency. The findings of this study revealed that there was little effort to narrow skill and knowledge gaps of youth before entry into self-employment. Training deficiencies were reported in business planning, confidence, risk and time management, conflict management, and communications skills. In addition, self-employment business options were starting up their function with insufficient entrepreneurial knowledge and skills. This would have limited businesses' better chance of long-run survival. Training should be given to bridge the knowledge and skill gaps of youth to ensure the long-term survival of their business. Recommendations include: government should allocate budget for youth short term training, relevant stakeholders should also create access to training for youths before and after entry into self-employment.

Small businesses, during start up with sufficient knowledge and skills, have a better chance of long-term survival. Therefore, this study calls for organized training that would be given to youth to bridge their knowledge and skill gaps on certain competency items and to ensure the long-term survival of micro and small enterprises. Relevant stakeholders should also deliberately create access to training for youth before and after entry into self-employment.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to provide empirical evidence of measurement of training gap and its effects of training on small business performance. Understanding role of training gap in business performance requires measurement of level of competency and training need in operating self-employment schemes. Validating consequence of level of training needs towards business performance of youth is essential to understand the contribution of skill training in the promotion of self-employment. The predictive validity of training need to business performance enhances our knowledge of the importance of training for small enterprise development. Previous studies focus on real training and its quality, however, fails to link youth self-employment initiatives. The finding of this study provides important insights on how strong skill training is important in supporting long term survival of youth self-employment.

Africa is going through a youth bulge with more people under 25 than above 50 in all of its countries. Creating opportunities for the burgeoning number of youth is a challenge that cannot be solved only at the country level. Regional integration policies that expand the opportunity space by increasing the size of economies and markets will be critical. Also needed are regional policies that can support the development and enhancement of innovation systems including investment in science and technology education to speed up the creation of a cadre of young people that can lead the transformation of stages of production from dependencies on primary products and extraction. Policies and Programs that can modernize agriculture and support effective creation of value chains that enhance the value added from agriculture that can excite youth back to the rural areas would also be needed. This paper explores the challenges facing countries in Africa in relation to it’s demographic transition, investigating the type of policies that would be most effective to address the challenge. The subsets of policies at the regional level are given special attention due to their opportunity expanding nature. Concrete examples of what has potential from observed results in other regions of the world are provided.

This paper examines the effects of sub-national union coverage on the youth's labor market outcomes.

In the context of the private business sector in Vietnam, this study link individual labor market data with union coverage at provincial level in the period 2013–2016 to investigate the effects of sub-national union coverage on the youth's labor market outcomes. Contingent on the outcome variable, we use the OLS and probit model that control for diverse individual characteristics, year- and industry-fixed effects, and particularly control for selection bias in the labor market.

The empirical results show that the union coverage is positively associated with a wide range of the youth's labor market outcomes, including employment status, wage rate, work hour, and job formality. Also, the coverage is complementary to individual labor contract in determining the youth's wage rate.

Our empirical results indicate positive associations between union coverage and the youth's multi-dimensional labor market outcomes, which contribute to this young age cohort's smooth school-to-work transition, provided that the role of trade union is challenged both in developing and developed countries.

This study provides an in-depth study on the interplay between trade union and the youth's labor market outcomes that contributes to the literature of labor market institutions and youth employment policies in a dynamic transitional economy of Vietnam.

This paper aims to explore challenges and opportunities associated with young carers' employment in Australia.

Using a multi-stakeholder approach, this study captures the reflections of stakeholders (n = 8) and young carers (n = 10) about opportunities for, and experiences of, paid employment for young carers.

Despite many organisations internationally increasingly pushing diversity agendas and suggesting a commitment to equal opportunity experiences, this study found that young carers' work opportunities are often disrupted by their caring role. For young carers to be successful in their careers, organisations need to provide further workplace flexibility, and other support is required to attract and retain young carers into organisations and harness their transferrable skills for meaningful careers.

The paper highlights important implications for human resource management practitioners given the need to maximise the participation of young carers as workers, with benefits for young carers themselves, employers and society.

The research adds to the human resource management and work–family conflict literature in examining young carers through drawing on Conservation of Resources theory to highlight resources invested in caring leads to loss of educational and work experience resources. This leads to loss cycles and spirals, which can potentially continue across a lifetime, further contributing to disadvantage and lack of workplace and societal inclusion for this group of young people.

The broader challenges of youth employment and ageing population have collectively received global attention in the Sustainable Development Goals. Under the assumption that there are fertile opportunities to judiciously address the youth unemployment and labour shortages within the aged care sector, the purpose of this paper is to draw on the experiences of millennial aged care workers (MACWs) in Western Australia (WA).

The paper makes use of an exploratory research approach which involved three aged care facilities in WA. A total of 19 semi-structured interviews with MACWs (n=14), human resources managers of aged care facilities (n=3), government official (n=1), and a union representative (n=1) were carried out.

The results revealed that millennials prefer positive working relationships with managers, co-workers and residents, flexible work schedules and value the altruistic nature of the profession. In addition, unsupportive work environment and workplace pressure to satisfy the needs of elderly residents reduced millennials’ desire to remain in the industry.

These findings have the potential to inform human resources managers, aged care service providers and policy makers to formulate strategies to retain the millennials, especially the unemployed, considered vital to the vitality of the Australian aged care industry.