The Youth Employment and Demonstrations Projects Act (YEDPA) was enacted in 1977 by the federal government of the United States to control the high levels of unemployment and related issues that affected American youth.
Federal funding earmarked for youth employment programs was from then on vastly augmented to cater for the needs of the youth. Though it was later ended in 1981, YEDPA provided a blueprint for the current youth employment methods (Gillespie, 2007).
The first method is the Occupational Skills Training Programs which are essentially aimed at imparting to the youth skills that are pertinent in particular occupations. Such programs include the Job Corps and Youth Initiatives in Apprenticeship which are aimed at training youths that are not attending school.
Labor Market Preparation Programs are also a method used for youth employment and the programs provide information on occupational opportunities and requirements, work habit and attitude, ability and interest testing as well as job search techniques (Sloman, 2004).
In addition, the programs offer direct work experience together with orientation to the working environment. The programs are also responsible for remedial basic education skills training together with General Equivalency Diploma (GED) preparation.
Temporary Job Programs are also used to provide youth employment by providing transitory sponsored employment (Gillespie, 2007). These programs are similar to Job Placement Programs which on the other hand offer the youth direct assistance in finding and securing employment.
In addition to providing job referrals the Job Placement Programs also offer supplementary services such as workshops on preparing resumes, instruction on appropriate behavior during a job interview and support groups for job seekers. Programs such as Job Factory and Job Track are included in this category and are essentially employment procurers for the youth (Sloman, 2004).
Various countries have built youth centers that are aimed at monitoring and controlling the rate of youth unemployment. Depending on the country and the nature of the programs, centers can be limited to neighborhoods or can also be targeting a particular group with similar age, gender or race.
Some of the centers have a regional or national reach depending on the funding and the impact they have on the youth. European countries for instance conducted a joint evaluation of the youth employment situation through the European Commission (Gillespie, 2007).
Projects such as the Youth in Action Program are designed to educate the youth about business and financial management as well as open up opportunities for self employment. Youth-Pass is also joint European programs which is aimed at providing informal education for the youth as well as provide job opportunities in the informal sector such as in farms (Sloman, 2004).
African countries have also taken issue with the rising rate of youth employment and various projects have been initiated since the late twentieth century to create youth employment. Most African governments have a Youth Fund which is basically a specific sum of money set aside in the annual budget to specifically create employment for the youth (Gary, 1994).
The youth in Africa are especially encouraged to procure informal jobs such as mechanic, construction and farming due to the low academic diversity perpetuated by the high educational fees in most African countries (Gillespie, 2007). It is for this reason that most African countries have reduced or completely eliminated the fees charges in order to crate more opportunities for future youth.
Asian countries have also experienced the same problem but countries such as china, South Korea and India have taken up the task of conducting higher education reforms in order to empower the graduating youth (Sloman, 2004).
Youth Employment Methods of the USA are basically more advanced and diverse when compared with Youth Employment Methods in other countries. Youth employment programs in the USA are numerous per given area than most countries since different projects can be found in a single area.
For instance a neighborhood could have a local youth employment project, while other different programs may exist at the district, regional, state and national level. American youth employment projects also cover a broad cross-section of the young adult’s life. Some projects specialize in employment education, other projects deal with preparation of the youth for employment while other projects help the youth in acquiring employment (Sloman, 2004).
An American youth can therefore advance faster while compare to the youth of another country since there are projects at every level from finishing school to attaining employment. The major problem in employment at a domestic level is scarcity of jobs where there are numerous qualified individuals but few or no job opportunities.
This leads to a high rate of unemployment which conversely translates to higher crime rate (Sloman, 2004). Academic qualification is also a domestic and international problem in employment where few individuals have the necessary academic prerequisites for a given job (Gillespie, 2007). This leads to importation of labor or outsourcing which leads to indirect draining of the affected economy.
Youth also have the tendency to associate informal jobs with lower social status or poverty and hence few youth engage in informal jobs such as farming, mechanics, construction and embroidery unless as a hobby or family business. This creates a void in the affected industry and consequently deterioration in the net income of the industry (Sloman, 2004).
References
Gary, F. (1994). The Unemployment Effects of Minimum Wages. International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 74-81.
Gillespie, A., (2007). Foundations of Economics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sloman, J., (2004). Economics. London: Penguin.