Young people getting old waiting for jobs

A National Action Plan for Youth Employment was launched this week to help find solutions for Sri Lanka’s long standing youth unemployment.

Despite investing in public funded health and education for children and despite many employment opportunities created through an open economy, Sri Lanka is yet to make productive use of its large youth population. Right now, unemployment is highest among the young and worse still, the possibility of being unemployed seem to increase with education. Despite free education, large numbers of children are also dropping out of school before their Advanced Levels.

Now, the experts say Sri Lanka’s youth boom itself is petering out and that the country has only about 10 years more of youth boom left. In other words Sri Lanka is running out of time to make use of youth opportunities for growth and development. However, although both young people and the country itself are running out of time, the National Action Plan for Youth Employment itself is still unclear on actions and time lines. The action plan does not specify a time line for action or priorities – but time is spent on setting up committees.

“Cabinet has approved the National Action Plan. There will be a Cabinet sub committee headed by the President himself and with representation from other relevant ministries. A steering committee will be set up headed by the Secretary of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and other stakeholders,” said Deepthi Lamahewa, CEO of the Youth Employment Network (YEN).

The YEN is an international UN movement on youth employment and the National Action Plan is a YEN initiative supported by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the World Bank.

The YEN agrees that the National Action Plan needs to be put into action as soon as possible for Sri Lanka to make use of its youth populations.

“A time frame to implement the National Action Plan has to be set as soon as possible. This has to be a minimum 10 year period. Actions also need to be prioritised over the short and medium term. Now that there is Cabinet approval and the process is moving I think we can expect some action soon,” said Lamahewa.

Sri Lanka has around 4.5 million people falling under the age group of youth - between the ages of 15 to 29 years. Most of them – around 85% - are in rural areas.

“Young people, particularly those in rural areas, have various problems. But their number one problem is unemployment. This is the biggest youth problem we have,” said S. Wirithamulla, Secretary, Ministry of Youth Affairs, speaking at the launch of the National Action Plan on Tuesday.

In fact, in Sri Lanka, young people find it harder to get work than older people.“Young people are more than three times likely as adults to be unemployed,” said the ILO country director for Sri Lanka, Tine Staermose.

According to the 2007, first quarter Labour Force Survey, the average overall unemployment in the country was 6.2%. But the rate of unemployment among the ages of 15 to 24 years was around 20% - over three times the national average. Unemployment was higher among the 20 to 24 year age group at 22% and young women of this age group had the highest rate of unemployment at 28.6%.

In 2005, about 280,000 young people in the 15 to 29 age group were looking for work but were unemployed.

Sri Lanka’s investments in education are also not giving the results they should because of the high rate of unemployment among young people.

“In Sri Lanka the probability of being unemployed is much higher among those with university or post graduate degrees. The share of the unemployed with 13 years or more of schooling, increased from 15.4% in 1990 to 29% in 2003,” pointed out the ILO country director.

A recent World Bank study shows that it takes at least 3 years after leaving school, to find work.“For a majority, transitions to employment occur within three years of leaving school. While the average duration of the transition from school to first job is nearly two years, a significant fraction of Sri Lankan youth have considerably longer periods of unemployment or inactivity before finding work. These long spells of joblessness are experienced particularly by young women,” said Naoko Ishii, Country Director, World Bank.

Large numbers are also dropping out of school early, despite ‘free’ education. The YEN Secretariat says around 76,000 children drop out of school between grades 8 to 10. By as early as the Ordinary Level exams, 226,000 children drop out of the school education system.

Although around 95,000 qualify to enter university, universities can only accommodate a fraction of this number. As a result, thousands of young people intelligent enough to be following higher studies are left with no clear avenue to follow.

Sociologists say giving jobs for young people is not a simple matter of mechanically fitting any person into any vacancy and that it has much bigger social dimensions to it.

“An economist will look at this as supply and demand. But reality is not so simple. Young people are looking for certain types of jobs. Why is this? We have to ask ourselves. On the other end, employers are looking for certain types of people, not anybody. So even at a supply and demand level this is not a simple thing,” said Prof. Siri Hettige from the University of Colombo.

Although young people are known to wait for ‘good jobs’ youth unemployment is also influenced by attitudes of businesses and entrepreneurs. In Sri Lanka, the private sector seems to have overlooked the costly national investment in education and seems to generate jobs suited for less educated populations with lower aspirations.

“While Sri Lanka’s educational achievement is close to that of most middle income countries, much of the economy is stuck in a production base with lower value added, focusing mainly on primary products and low end manufacturing,” said the ILO.

Sociologists say Sri Lanka’s youth unemployment is an indicator of a much larger social and development problem.“Youth employment is a social issue that needs to be addressed at national level because this is also an issue of development and social justice. We talk about equal opportunities but if you look at even the education system, there are no equal opportunities. So young people feel society is unjust,” says Hettige.

“So we cannot expect only the government to make the National Action Plan work. There has to be cooperation from the whole society because this is a much bigger social issue,” says Hetttige. The experts say the whole of Sri Lankan society needs to become more sensitive to the dimensions of youth unemployment and needs to work together to make a better future for Sri Lanka’s young people.