CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF URBAN YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT IN KEMBATA TEMBARO ZONE, SNNPR, ETHIOPIA

Due to rapid population growth and low level of economic performance youth unemployment in developing countries particularly in sub-Saharan Africa has been worsened. The major purpose of this study was to investigate the causes and consequences of urban youth unemployment in Kembata Tembaro zone, SNNPR, Ethiopia. Towards this end, a multistage sampling technique was employed to gather data from 300 randomly selected youths of which 132 were employed and 168 were unemployed within the study area. For this study both primary and secondary sources were used to collect both primary and secondary data. Different data collection techniques like questionnaire, key informant interview and focus group discussions were entirely used to collect primary quantitative data, whereas different published and unpublished sources were used to collect secondary data. The study findings revealed that the key causes of unemployment identified during this study includes low levels of education, lack of sufficient skills, job preferences and low job opportunities, rural to urban migration, still as misguided education policies and corruption. However, the most consequence of urban youth unemployment within the study area includes poor standards of living, psychological impact, high dependency, corruptions, suicides and dependence. Moreover, the result from the binary logistic regression model revealed that, education level of the household head, sex of the youth, age of the youth, skill match and education of the youth and access to market information had significantly and negatively influenced youth unemployment within the study area. Thus, government should design policies to reform the education curricula in both secondary and vocational schools to stress skills development, increase job opportunities for fresh graduates, facilitating information access in time of job search, enhancing good governance and thereby avoiding corruption, facilitating either formal or informal educational opportunities for household heads and etc.