Providing skills & employment to students after school education

Abstract

This project attempts to study the challenges faced in improving the employment among youth – both skilled and semi-skilled. The aim is to identify the key challenges faced by unemployed youths in finding the right jobs for them, as well as the challenges faced by companies/jobrecruiters to find the right fit to fill in the job vacancies. This is what the economists refer to “frictional unemployment” which happens as a result of growth in emerging country like India and remain unfilled, despite the huge unemployment. Bridging this gap is a social challenge. Governments have tried to address these problems through different types of intervention, ranging from training and employment services to wage subsidies and programs that support entrepreneurship in rural areas. Apart from that, many private companies have come forward with their CSR activities aiming to provide education and skills training to the youth for their empowerment. However, the problem remains the same, and there are still many unanswered questions as to why? A plausible explanation is the imperfections in information, which leads to simultaneous presence of unemployment and vacant jobs. For example, a person who is looking for a job first time may not be equipped with resources for finding a job and hence remains unemployed. Organization, on the other hand stops hiring believing that they are unable to find employees who may qualify for the post although in reality such employees do exist. Frictional unemployment is thus, an economic reality. In this paper, we’ll try to explore the reasons why these imperfections exist in the labor market in India. The findings are based on primary research done in the city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The job market studied is basically unemployed youth, who have received formal school education till class X or XII and have just graduated from the schools, and are willing to join the labor force.