A Study into the Effectiveness of the Youth Employment Programme (YEP) in Mauritius

Youth employment programmes are used as a means of developing employability skills through a wage subsidy strategy. This study examines the effectiveness of the Youth Employment Programme (YEP) in Mauritius in terms of the trainee’s satisfaction of YEP, his/her belief that YEP would help him/her to get a job and the odds of actually being employed once the programme is over. The Human Capital Theory is used to describe the transformation process through which YEP increases youth employability. Data was randomly collected among 214 individuals who were either currently or had previously been on the programme. All logistic models fitted the data well with correct classifications ranging from 70% to 92.5%. None of the demographic factors predicted the effectiveness of YEP. Trainees’ satisfaction was predicted by the sector of work placement, quality of programme, field of study and recommendations. Trainees’ beliefs were predicted by the number of interviews, duration of unemployment prior to the programme, whether internship matched their fields of study, nature of employment and quality of the programme. However, the nature of employment and salary were the only factors that predicted the odds of actually being employed. The YEP in Mauritius may require major restructuration to cater for trainees outside the field of social sciences. Although the YEP has failed to provide the adequate support and a satisfying experience, its contribution cannot be underestimated. An evaluation of the programme should be carried out at shorter intervals to detect major loopholes so that these may be resolved in time.

Study on employability of mechanical engineering graduates from Sunyani Technical University of Ghana

Although the Government of Ghana gives considerable attention to technical education to accelerate national development, some graduates remain unemployed for years after graduation. In this study, employability of mechanical engineering graduates from Sunyani Technical University of Ghana is presented. It assessed the employment status and duration of unemployment of the graduates, identified the factors that hinder their employability and the challenges that require attention prior to graduation of students, and made suggestions for improvement. Respondents of the study were 131 graduates from 2014-2017 graduation years, comprising 50% of graduates from each of the Program options in the department. The sampling techniques used were purposive and stratified random sampling techniques. A questionnaire was the research instrument used for data collection and it was administered using e-mails, WhatsApp and phone calls. The results revealed that the employment status of the graduates was about 84% with the duration of unemployment about 29%, 41% and 19% for one, two and three years after their national service respectively. The main factor hindering employability of the graduates was inadequate practical skills since more attention was given to theory at the expense of practical work. The main challenge which requires attention prior to graduation of students was the lack of job-seeking skills. The Department should therefore, focus more on the practical element of the Programs by increasing the practical hours and partner with industry for curriculum development, more internship opportunities and industrial tours, and organise seminars on job acquisition processes prior to graduation of students to enhance employability of the graduates.

Unraveling the Complex Relationship Between Work Transitions and Self-Esteem and Life Satisfaction

Transitions in and out of work are common experiences with major repercussions for people’s lives. The complex link between work transitions and psychological adjustment is not well understood, however. In this preregistered study, we analyzed 11 waves of longitudinal data from 13,671 participants (representative of the Dutch population) to examine the transactional effects between repeated work transitions (employment and unemployment) and psychological adjustment (self-esteem and life satisfaction). Specifically, we investigated change trajectories before and after the transitions and tested whether moderator variables predicted individual differences in change. Participants with lower levels of self-esteem and life satisfaction were more likely to experience unemployment and less likely to experience employment transitions, indicating selection effects. Participants decreased in their self-esteem and life satisfaction before the beginning of the unemployment transition, indicating anticipatory socialization effects. These effects did not differ for multiple experiences of the same transition. Participants showed larger increases in life satisfaction in response to employment transitions when they experienced higher levels of job satisfaction. Participants showed larger decreases in self-esteem before unemployment transitions when they experienced a longer duration of unemployment. Our findings point to bidirectional effects between work transitions and self-esteem and life satisfaction, which is consistent with transactional theories. They also highlight the importance of the timing of changes before and after work transitions, the dynamic nature of the transition-adjustment link, and the existence of individual differences in psychological adjustment to work transitions that were linked to characteristics of the corresponding transition.

A job ladder model with stochastic employment opportunities

We set up a model with on‐the‐job search in which firms infrequently post vacancies for which workers occasionally apply. The model nests the standard job ladder and stock‐flow models as special cases, while remaining analytically tractable and easy to estimate from standard panel data sets. The parameters from a structurally estimated model on US data are significantly different from either the restrictions imposed by a stock‐flow or job ladder model. Imposing these restrictions significantly understates the search option associated with employment and are, unlike our model, inconsistent with recent survey evidence and declining job finding rates and starting wage with duration of unemployment, both of which are present in the data.

Job Seekers’ Perceptions and Employment Prospects: Heterogeneity, Duration Dependence, and Bias

This paper uses job seekers’ elicited beliefs about job finding to disentangle the sources of the decline in job-finding rates by duration of unemployment. We document that beliefs have strong predictive power for job finding, but are not revised downward when remaining unemployed and are subject to optimistic bias, especially for the long-term unemployed. Leveraging the predictive power of beliefs, we find substantial heterogeneity in job finding with the resulting dynamic selection explaining most of the observed negative duration dependence in job finding. Moreover, job seekers’ beliefs underreact to heterogeneity in job finding, distorting search behavior and increasing long-term unemployment. (JEL D83, E24, J22, J64, J65)

Incidence and Determinants of Educated-Youth Unemployment in Rajshahi City of Bangladesh

This study presents the incidence and determinants of unemployment among educated youths in Rajshahi city of Bangladesh. For this purpose, the study analyses primary data collected from randomly selected 250 graduated students of different educational institutions in Rajshahi city by applying two-fold approaches, such as descriptive statistics, and logistic regression analysis. The descriptive statistics approach finds the rate of unemployment among educated youths in the city is 59.2% and the mean duration of unemployment is 2.5 years. The logistic regression results find that the probability of being unemployed will be decreased if the educated youths are migrated to Dhaka city, have internet access, and are connected with social network but if they have job preferences, the probability of being unemployment will be increased. Therefore, institutional facilities, job related trainings, and the development of service sector in Rajshahi city can be crucial solution of the problem.