Search results

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.

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.

Levels of unemployment and environmental challenges make social entrepreneurship and social enterprise very important for the sustainability of society. Higher education has played a fundamental role in driving entrepreneurship and innovation in local, national, regional, and global contexts. The authors of this article explore the state of the legislative framework in Ghana, as well as social enterprise education, stakeholder engagement, models and challenges. The methodology applied for this paper is concept mapping, enabling the critical exploration of the relevance of social enterprise in the context of higher education, and demonstrating how it could practically serve as a panacea to rising youth unemployment. This research concludes by making a case for including social enterprise in the higher education curriculum.

The birth and survival rate of youth-owned businesses has been a major concern for policymakers, industry and academics alike. Learning and innovation play important roles and more critical is the mediating factors and how it impacts the enterprise competitiveness of youth-owned businesses and hence worth studying. Therefore, this study aims to examine the impact of mediating factors such as government support, informal network society and external knowledge infrastructure on learning and innovation in youth-owned small businesses in Lagos, Nigeria, from a cross-sectional perspective.

Leveraging the sectoral system of innovation theory, we use a primary research method and data obtained from a structured questionnaire administered among a sample of 1,000 registered youth-owned small businesses in Lagos, while 30 in-depth interviews were also conducted. The exploratory factor analysis was used for data examination.

The findings show that even though government support, informal network society and external knowledge all have a positive relationship with learning and innovation in youth-owned small businesses, government support has the most impactful impact. The informal network society via a trade association, professional network and social media are also critical in knowledge transfer in youth-owned businesses.

The significance of learning and innovation is more important as many small businesses do not have the privilege of standard human resource management (HRM) systems. This paper looks at the mediating factors affecting the introduction of innovative practices in youth-owned and managed small businesses and how productivity is enabled in a developing county context.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of Anchor Borrowers Programme (APB) on youth rice farmers’ productivity (yield/ha).

Using cross-sectional data from youth rice farmers in Kaduna State, Northern Nigeria, probit regression was used to examine the determinants of participation in ABP amongst the youth rice farmers. In addition, the instrumental variable (IV) regression approach that could mitigate selection bias due to unobservable factors resulting from the cross-sectional nature of the data was also used to determine the impact of the ABP on rice productivity of youth farmers.

Findings from the study indicated that marital status, education, access to credit and membership of cooperative association were the significant determinants of participation in the ABP amongst the youth rice farmers.

The implication of the result is that participation in the ABP leads to an increase in yield by about 42.46%, which shows the effectiveness of the ABP in the study area.

This study provides a rigorous econometric analysis of the determinants of ABP and its impact on rice productivity amongst youth farmers in Northern Nigeria. Thus, the study recommends improvement in credit accessibility, participation in the cooperative association and more education of the farmers to sustain the inputs distribution aim of the ABP.