Youth Unemployment And Vocational Training: Causes And Solutions

Statement of the problem

Discuss About The Youth Unemployment And Vocational Training.

Many researches have been done previously to determine the causes of the unemployment. One such study has been done on Pakistan, a developing country. (Maqbool et al., 2013) where the prime focus was to apply Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to determine the causes of unemployment. Like Pakistan, in many other developing countries, unemployment persists in the society like a chronic disease. In another study, it has been found that youth unemployment is a severe socio-economic problem in most of the European countries (Eichhorst, Hinte & Rinne, 2013). Thus, unemployment is a global issue.

In the recent time, the issue of unemployment has become very challenging as well as significant. The association of unemployment and lack of capital access, entrepreneurship, and education has been demonstrated in many studies. Besides, skill mismatch is a primary reason behind the unemployment issue as severe skill mismatch leads to make a prolonged adjustment in the labour market which reduces the job creation and enhances the chances of unemployment (Otekhile & Zeleny, 2016).

The importance of the new job creation and enhancement of the employment have widespread the social and economic affects. The majority of studies have ascertained data on the challenge of national labour market for the existence of high youth unemployment. The cost of unemployment for a youth is too hard to affect the youth’s standard of living. This research will focus on the causes of unemployment as prolonged unemployment cause psychological disorder and may lead the youth to commit suicide (Milner, Page & Lamontagne, 2014) and it robs the economy of talents (Beblavý, Marconi & Maselli, 2017).

  The aim of this study is to understand the determinants of unemployment of youth and how these determinants affect the social and economic environment.

The research objectives are:

1. To understand whether skill mismatch has any role in the unemployment of youth
2. To find out whether the whether lack of proper education and entrepreneurship have any influence on the unemployment issue

• To check whether paucity of capital access affects the unemployment problem

1. To suggest the probable solutions by which the society can eradicate the problem of unemployment that would directly result in the employment increase and change in the labour market (Okoye, 2017).

RQ1. What is the role of skill mismatch for the issue of unemployment?

RQ2. What is the impact of improper education and lack of entrepreneurship for increasing unemployment?

RQ3. How does the shortage of capital access cause unemployment?

RQ4. What are the probable means by which these determinants of unemployment can be reduced to bring the socio-economic change?

The null hypothesis against the null hypothesis is described below:

H₀: The impact of the causes (skill mismatch, lack of education, shortage of entrepreneurship, and paucity of capital access) addressed in this research paper will not result unemployment.

Rationale of the research

H₁: The impact of the causes (skill mismatch, lack of education, shortage of entrepreneurship, and paucity of capital access) addressed in this paper will result in the unemployment.

The literature review aims to provide emphasis on the various aspects and elements that have been explained by the other researchers on the similar topics. It is useful to obtain extensive level of thought with the help of which an idea about this topic would be attained. The key points of this research paper have been described as follows:

Youth unemployment means joblessness of young people who are mostly fresher and/or have just completed their studies. Youth are far more affected for this employment crisis than the elder people. Most of the researches have highlighted that the education and skill sets are not suited for most of the private jobs and these do not match with the employment opportunities in the private sectors (Demidova, Marelli & Signorelli, 2013). Another part of the society also thinks that even if there is job opportunity, the absence of adequate job seekers actually catalyses unemployment (Sir, 2017). The long-term unemployment among the youth actually make them hopeless and the issue of unemployment actually diminishes the urge to keep looking for new job opportunities. Unemployment is the most harmful demotivating factor that makes the youth a discouraged workers. Dependency on jobs from an urge to earn money and to make a career is the beginning of joblessness. Young people are very important stakeholder of any society (Salami, 2013). There are many complicated causes behind the youth unemployment. The quality of the candidate and the education of irrelevance are the root causes of unemployment (Zimmermann et al., 2013).

Skill mismatch can be defined as the space between a candidate’s job skills and the present demand in job market. It is a challenge to the path of employment and it affects every layers of the society. The extent to which the labourers or the candidates are hired in an occupation which is irrelevant to their skill sets or their field of study is measured by the horizontal mismatch.

The readiness of work to graduate freshers is a headache for the government as well as for the educational institutions. Industry needs resources based on general employability skills but the education administrators provide degree programs which are aligned with employers who are graduate. Thus the skills required by the industry are not possessed by the freshers (Sir, 2017) and unemployment occurs in this way.

Research aims and objectives

According to Restrepo (2015), the novel jobs require properly skilled candidates but the number of these ideal jobs are limited in the industry and these jobs hire only those candidates who possess the requisite skills. Thus, unemployment increases due to the shortage of ideal jobs and the mismatch in the desired skills in the labour marketing. The technological progress in the job market is rapidly increasing in the recent decades and coping with the technical skills by time is becoming difficult for the labourers. The technological change imposes a drastic structural change in the labour market, making a decline in the routine-cognitive jobs. Thus, the competition is raising at a high rate in the labour-intensive sectors (Acemoglu et al., 2016). This structural change creates a long-lasting problem of unemployment, especially at the time of recession. Moreover, skill mismatch affects the labour market in a larger way during recession as the demand for services and goods get depressed.

An example of the unemployment in the U.S. has been depicted in the Figure 1 which shows the percentage of job decline from 1996 to 2015.

Fig. 1: The employment rates for various occupational categories in U.S. (Restrepo, 2015)

The lack proper education means poor quality education. It is also a primary cause of poverty. The poor quality education is controlled by certain factors. If the management of the educational organisations do not implement proper and updated educational methodologies then there will be a gap between the industrial requirements and the available skill sets of the candidates. The traditional theory oriented education is another important cause which stops the candidates from getting the novel jobs. The other probable factors for poor education (“Poor quality education and care”, 2018) are few qualified educational instructors, inadequate conditions to provide practical knowledge, and learning anything in an unsettled environment. In addition to that, after completion of study, self-review is very important which is absent in most of the educational organisations. Today’s poor education leads unemployment (Görlich, Stepanok & Al-Hussami, 2013).

The entrepreneurship is the name of starting a new business by one’s own design, thought, and management. The person who starts the entrepreneurship is called an entrepreneur. The entrepreneurship can be classified into two types which are as follows –  

1. Necessity-based entrepreneurship where the entrepreneur has no option left than earning a living and
2. Opportunity-based entrepreneurship where the entrepreneur chooses to start a business which is not borne.

The entrepreneurial ability is a necessary requirement to start a new business because entrepreneurship includes lots of risks and investments. The entrepreneurship also determines the growth of the economy because it generates jobs and helps in employment. For a progressive economy, there should be both researchers who should research and entrepreneurs who should implement them. If the growth of the economy does not match the requisite entrepreneurship opportunities then the chance of unemployment will arise. Lack of entrepreneurship means lack of entrepreneurial ability and lack of spirit to initiate an entrepreneurship business. If the focus is to create a socio-economic environment then a galvanizing culture should be created where the youth can think of creating new job opportunities rather than becoming job seekers only (Salami, 2013).

Research Questions

The capital access implies the availability of capital in the hand of people. If the access of capital is increased in the hand of the people then the number of entrepreneurship will also be increased. To enhance the industrial production, the manufacturing giants have potential capital needs. If the capital access is increased then the scope of investment will also be increased and big firms will invest for new projects and thus they will hire new people and as a result, employment will be increased. Therefore, lack of capital access will inversely affect employment. Capital access can make a layman an investor and even an entrepreneur. Access of affordable capital can make the difference between failure and success for entrepreneurs. The supply of loans will help in boosting the business. Moreover, micro and small businesses will be benefitted if the funding is raised. Providing capital access to enterprises will create more jobs and ultimately the economy will be stabilised (Capital Access, 2018).

The gap is the missing area or piece of the research literature which has nit been acknowledged in the previous researches and the area which remains unexplored. It could be the research method, the sample, or the research variable. The literature gap of a particular research defines the gap that has not been taken into account in the previous researches of that particular topic. The aim of any research is to address the gap in the literature and then to fulfil that gap. An exhaustive review can help to find out the gap. Fulfilling the gap is the ultimate contribution that a researcher can make for the research. In the present research, there has been numerous researches have already been done on unemployment due to skill mismatch and unemployment due to improper education. However, there is not enough study done on the lack of capital access variable and ultimately the paucity of entrepreneurship due to less capital funding. Thus, this research will address the driving factor of unemployment like skill mismatch and improper education, focusing on the lack of entrepreneurship for shortage of capital investments. Thus, this research gap will be fulfilled in this extensive study (Albanesi & ?ahin, 2018).

The research methodology tells which techniques and processes should be used to conduct the research. It refers to the process that shows how to conduct a research in a synchronised way. It helps to understand various types of techniques that can be used in the research (Smith, 2015).

Research Hypothesis

Research philosophy is used to analyse and build a detailed study. It is thought of the process through which data of the phenomenon should be collected, interpreted, and used. There are mainly three types of research philosophies –

1. Interpretivism
2. Realism

Positivism research philosophy helps to develop a deep-rooted analysis on a particular topic of study. Interpretivism research philosophy deals with the activities and functions on management. On the other hand, realism provides a mixed approach on the research philosophies. In the proposed research, positivism research philosophy will be appropriate as it will use a logical as well as a critical approach to investigate the issue. It is required to understand that the research philosophy of positivism comes from the sensory experiences and the facts are used for analysis purposes. The remaining two philosophies are rejected as their philosophies depend on every individual. Besides, the perception may vary from person to person (Vaioleti, 2016).

There are four types of research approaches useful for doing any research. These are as follows-

1. Quantitative research approach
2. Qualitative research approach

• Pragmatic approach

1. Participatory or Advocacy approach

Quantitative research usually goes with the positivist paradigm. The process goes with having one or more research hypothesis addressing probable relationship among the investigating variables.

The qualitative research approach deals with a social constructivist paradigm that focuses on the socially built nature of practice.

The pragmatic approach involves that scientific method which appears to be best for that particular research problem. Based on the method taken into account, the relevant data is collected.

Lastly, the advocacy approach is somehow emancipatory where the researcher follows a specific agenda aiming to reform the framework to bring a change. At the end of the study, an action agenda is also created for change (Alzheimer Europe – Research – Understanding dementia research – Types of research – The four main approaches, 2018).

In the proposed research, the quantitative approach is followed.

The research designs are broadly classified into three types which are –

1. Descriptive or analytical
2. Exploratory

• Explanatory

To understand and evaluate the study in a descriptive way, analytical research design is used. If the researcher wants to understand the concept at the beginning of the research, then the exploratory design is used. On the other hand, the explanatory design is used when the researcher wants to build a relationship between the two variables which are considered for the research (Flick 2015). This descriptive research design will therefore be, used for the purpose of research as it will help to achieve a detailed idea about the existing concepts and theories of the study. Moreover, the remaining two designs will be rejected.

Literature Review

The procedure to measure and collect information is known as data collection method. The data is collected over the targeted variables in a systematic manner. There are two significant methods to collect data which are Primary data collection method and Secondary data collection method (Mackey & Gass, 2015). The data which is collected here to conduct the research is the primary data. The secondary sources are the manual and electronic journals, several articles related to the research topic where the data is already available. Primary data is collected using various processes like survey method and interview method. Primary data has even been attained by taking assistance of the sampling method with the help of which the causes of unemployment can be analysed.

The sampling technique can be either probabilistic or non-probabilistic sampling technique. In this sampling technique, simple random sampling technique is used which is a type of probabilistic sampling. It is expected that around 50 young unemployed persons will be asked to provide information required to conduct this research.

Data Analysis is required to inspect, clean, transform and model the data. These steps are necessary for decision-making. Data analysis also helps to discover the data in detail and ultimately helps to suggest conclusions (Taylor, Bogdan & DeVault, 2015). Data Analysis methodology has two categories –

1. Quantitative data analysis technique
2. Qualitative data analysis technique

In qualitative data analysis technique, the researcher deals with the data which are gathered in the forms of explanation and interpretation of explored scenarios. Besides, quantitative data analysis technique is an organized way to investigate strategies while collecting numerical data. This process allows researcher to transform the numerical data.

In order to perform the quantitative data analysis using the data gathered from the above mentioned technique, the collected data will be gone through required transformation from numeric and percentages to provide the researcher the scope to compare the data for better results. The data may then be used for diagrammatic representation in terms of graphs and charts.

The proposed timetable for this study is shown below:

Activities	1st to 3rd Week	4th to 10th week	11th to 13th  Week	14th to 17th  Week	18th to 21st  Week	22nd  to 23rd  Week	24th  Week
Selection of the topic	ü
Data collection from secondary sources	ü	ü
Creating layout		ü
Literature review		ü	ü	ü
Analysis and interpretation of  collected data				ü	ü	ü
Findings of the data					ü	ü
Conclusion of the study						ü
Formation of draft						ü	ü
Submission of final work							ü

Fig: Gantt Chart

(Source: As created by the author)

When a research is conducted, the researcher is ought to follow certain ethical norms and restrictions during the whole research process. According to the Data Protection Act, 1998, a researcher has to maintain the privacy of the information that is not published while conducting a research. The researcher is obliged to protect the data obtained from the respondents. If the researcher, by any chance, does so, he may be penalised for breaching the Data Protection Act. If the researcher does not maintain the privacy of any respondent, there will be a breach of ethical issues by the researcher. Therefore, the researcher may have to take the permission of the respondents before using those information for online survey (Gajjar, 2013).

Concept of the effect of skill mismatch on unemployment

There are certain constraints to every research. In the present research, the limitations are time and budget. For example, the time frame can be considered as a problem or limitation in every research. Besides, the availability of resources also remains in question. Often it happens that some resources are inaccessible or not available. Moreover, another limitation would be the population, which is considered in this study. The topic is sensitive is sensitive and the persons who will be interviewed, are unemployed. Thus, there may be certain ignorance to the part of unemployed youth who may not be interested to disclose whether they are employed or not. Even if the respondents turn up for the interview, they may ignore certain sensitive questions which hamper the flow of the study. Thus, the research needs to be planned in such a way so that most of the limitations can be removed (Shipman, 2014).

References

Acemoglu, D., Autor, D., Dorn, D., Hanson, G. H., & Price, B. (2016). Import competition and the great US employment sag of the 2000s. Journal of Labor Economics, 34(S1), S141-S198.

Albanesi, S., & ?ahin, A. (2018). The gender unemployment gap. Review of Economic Dynamics.

Alzheimer Europe – Research – Understanding dementia research – Types of research – The four main approaches. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.alzheimer-europe.org/Research/Understanding-dementia-research/Types-of-research/The-four-main-approaches

Beblavý, M., Marconi, G., & Maselli, I. (2017). A European unemployment benefit scheme: the rationale and the challenges ahead. Publications Office of the European Union.

Capital Access. (2018). Retrieved from https://asbcouncil.org/issues/capital-access#.WwT1xu6FPIU

Demidova, O., Marelli, E., & Signorelli, M. (2013). Spatial effects on the youth unemployment rate: The case of eastern and western Russian regions. Eastern European Economics, 51(5), 94-124.

Eichhorst, W., Hinte, H., & Rinne, U. (2013). Youth unemployment in Europe: what to do about it? (No. 65). IZA policy paper.

Flick, U. (2015). Introducing research methodology: A beginner’s guide to doing a research project. Sage.

Gajjar, D. (2013). Ethical consideration in research. Education, 2(7).

Görlich, D., Stepanok, I., & Al-Hussami, F. (2013). Youth unemployment in Europe and the world: Causes, consequences and solutions (No. 59). Kiel Policy Brief, IfW.

Mackey, A., & Gass, S. M. (2015). Second language research: Methodology and design. Routledge.

Maqbool, M. S., Mahmood, T., Sattar, A., & Bhalli, M. N. (2013). Determinants of unemployment: Empirical evidences from Pakistan. Pakistan Economic and Social Review, 191c-208.

Milner, A., Page, A., & Lamontagne, A. D. (2014). Cause and effect in studies on unemployment, mental health and suicide: a meta-analytic and conceptual review. psychology medicine, 44(5), 909-917.

Okoye, A. C. (2017). Entrepreneurship Education: A Panacea for Graduate Unemployment in Nigeria. Online Journal of Arts, Management & Social Sciences, 2(1).

Otekhile, C. A., & Zeleny, M. (2016). Self Service Technologies: A Cause of Unemployment. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Knowledge, 4(1), 60-71.

Poor quality education and care. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.ero.govt.nz/publications/quality-in-early-childhood-services/poor-quality-education-and-care/

Restrepo, P. (2015). Skill Mismatch and Structural Unemployment. Unpublished manuscript.

Salami, C. G. E. (2013). Youth unemployment in Nigeria: A time for creative intervention. International Journal of Business and Marketing Management, 1(2), 18-26.

Shipman, M. D. (2014). The limitations of social research. Routledge.

Sir, K. (2017). Review on Graduates’ Unemployment in Sri Lanka and the Globe. Global Journal of Human-Social Science Research.

Smith, J. A. (Ed.). (2015). Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research methods. Sage.

Taylor, S. J., Bogdan, R., & DeVault, M. (2015). Introduction to qualitative research methods: A guidebook and resource. John Wiley & Sons.

Vaioleti, T. M. (2016). Talanoa research methodology: A developing position on Pacific research. Waikato Journal of Education, 12(1).

Zimmermann, K. F., Biavaschi, C., Eichhorst, W., Giulietti, C., Kendzia, M. J., Muravyev, A., … & Schmidl, R. (2013). Youth unemployment and vocational training. Foundations and Trends® in Micro economics, 9(1–2), 1-157.