A Tale of Youth Graduates Unemployment
the United Nations defines youth as all individuals aged between 15 and 24(Bennell, 2007). There are 1.2 billion youth between the ages of 15 and 24 years that make up 18% of the world’s population. Of these, about 87% of these young people live in developing countries. For example, Africa alone has some 200 million youth. Ethiopia has the largest youth population in Sub-Saharan Africa. More than half of its population is under the age of 25 and 20% are between 15 and 24 (Nebil, Gezahegn and Hayat, 2010). The problem of youth unemployment particularly in urban areas has been a persistent concern of politicians and policymakers since the 1960s. Nonetheless, youth development has remained at the margins of national development strategies in most countries though there exists some growing interest towards the youth. And still youth are suffering from many untold problems emanating from unemployment which many called it ‘youth crisis’ (Bennell, 2007). These authors added that the number of unemployed youth world-wide has reached 88 million and the number of young people looking for work in Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to increase by 28% in the next15 years – an additional 30 million people joining the pool of job seekers. In Burundi, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Uganda, youth poverty exceeds 80%, whereas it is much lower in Ghana (Gyimah-Brempong and Kimeny, 2013). In Ethiopia, in 2005, youth (15-24 years old) recorded a 7.8% unemployment rate, higher than any other age group (Nebil, Gezahegn and Hayat, 2010).
