The Challenge of Youth Employment in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka has been regarded as a model of a country with successful social policies, yet for decades it has faced major challenges in providing employment and satisfying other aspirations of youth. Although the labor force has become more educated,...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Publication |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/main?menuPK=64187510&pagePK=64193027&piPK=64187937&theSitePK=523679&menuPK=64187510&searchMenuPK=64187283&siteName=WDS&entityID=000333038_20100511023422 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2451 |
| Summary: | Sri Lanka has been regarded as a model
of a country with successful social policies, yet for
decades it has faced major challenges in providing
employment and satisfying other aspirations of youth.
Although the labor force has become more educated, and this
trend is particularly marked for youth, the main source of
employment for both youth and adults remains the informal
sector. Moreover, the importance of the informal sector as a
source of employment has increased since the mid-1990s. On
the positive side, unemployment declined in last decades,
particularly for youth. The Sri Lankan government has
continually acted on various fronts to address the youth
unemployment problem. It has tried to improve and modernize
Sri Lanka's general education system, which has long
been criticized as too academic, and to increase the
accessibility of training so as to promote the employability
youth leaving school. Other actions included strengthening
entrepreneurship programs and introducing career guidance
and counseling and improving labor market information to
help young people in their job searches and to guide human
resource planning. In 2007, the government developed the
National Action Plan for youth employment, built, for the
first time, on a coherent youth employment policy framework
and deriving an encompassing and consistent set of policy
recommendations. The plan was based on in-depth analysis of
Sri Lanka's labor market, provided via a series of
background papers undertaken under the auspices of the Youth
Employment Network (YEN). To provide the richness and
comprehensiveness of this analysis in its totality, these
papers, updated and revised, are collected in the present
book. This book offers a wealth of valuable advice to the
government and other stakeholders to achieve this goal. By
exploiting the full potential of the youth, not only will
their talent, aspirations, and energy be harnessed to
advance economic growth, but also the existing inequities
will be reduced and, hopefully in the longer run, eliminated. |
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