Employment creation potential, labor skills requirements, and skill gaps for young people: methodological framework

JUST PUBLISHED

Brookings AGI Working Paper: #25 "Employment creation potential, labor skills requirements, and skill gaps for young people: A methodological framework". The DPRU-authored paper is part of Brooking's reasearch workstream focusing on addressing Africa’s youth unemployment through industries without smokestacks (IWOSS).

Written by Prof Haroon Bhorat (DPRU Director) and DPRU researchers Caitlin Allen, Zaakhir Asmal, Robert Hill, and Christopher Rooney, the paper presents a methodological framework for assessing the extent to which youth unemployment can be addressed through employment creation in industries without smokestacks in individual countries.

They discuss the skill gaps in the youth population that need to be addressed for this potential to be reached. There are two components to the method: (i) estimating skill demand, and (ii) identifying skill gaps in the target youth population. On the labor demand side, the framework seeks to identify the skills required for a sector to reach its employment potential. On the supply side, the methodology ultimately aims to answer the question: Do the skills to meet the demand in the sector exist in the population; and if not, where are the gaps?

Read the paper in full here: