Socio-Economic and Demographic Factors That Determine Urban Youth Unemployment in Somali Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

Youth is the essential entrepreneurial force for every country's social, political, and economic development. Urban youth make up about 34.27 percent of the population in Ethiopia. The youth unemployment crisis is one of the serious challenges that Ethiopia is facing nowadays, and it should be mentioned in the nation's public discourse. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to specify the socioeconomic and demographic factors that influence urban youth unemployment in the Somali Regional State, specifically in Jigjiga, Degahbour, Kebridahar, Gode, and Dollo Ado towns. Both primary and secondary data sources were employed. A multi-stage sampling technique has been used to select 385 sample respondents from the total population of the study. This study found that almost 63% of youth in the study area were unemployed, and a large number of unemployed youths live in Jigjiga and Dollo Ado Towns as compared to other city administrations. The econometric model's findings indicate that factors like gender, education level, work experience, access to credit, access to information, time applied for job vacancy, active job seeker, social network (network with clan elders, government officials, businessmen, and other friends), and residence in Jigjiga and Gode town have a significant association with the likelihood of youth unemployment in the Somali regional state. Therefore, this study recommends that the regional government and local city administration should develop effective policies and strategies to address the underlying causes of gender inequality, improving access and quality of education, supporting freshman graduates to find jobs, providing access to credit and job vacancies, ensuring fair and free job competition, and managing youth migration for job seeking.

Missed Opportunity of Antenatal Care Services Utilization and Associated Factors among Reproductive Age Women in Eastern Hararghe Zone, Eastern Ethiopia: Mixed Methods Study

“…As the number of kebeles varies in the three districts, proportional sampling to give equal weights was used [22]. As a result, samples were taken from 39 percent of kebeles in Grawa, 33 percent in Meta, and 28 percent in Haramaya [18,19]. Based on the size of the population, 10 kebeles and 118 HHs from Haramaya, 12 kebeles and 165 HHs from Meta, and 14 kebeles and 139 HHs from Grawa were selected for the sample of kebeles and homes (HHS).…”

“…Three days of training on ethics, tools, sampling, and data collection techniques was given to data collectors and supervisors. Daily oversight of the data gathering process was provided, and the data collectors received prompt feedback [18,19].…”

“…A traditional birth attendant (TBA) is a person who assists a mother during prenatal and postpartum care and who initially acquired her skills by delivering babies herself or through apprenticeship to other traditional birth attendants [18,19,28].…”

“…Despite the disparities in maternal death rates across developed and developing countries, studies have demonstrated that the pattern of maternal mortality and morbidity has remained constant throughout time. The reasons given for this include the long-standing custom of having births at home in risky and unclean settings with untrained or inadequately qualified delivery attendants [5,18,19].…”