We are back with our readings about indicators for effective monitoring and evaluation of youth employment actions.
A fantastic guide to creation of these indicators is ILO’s Guide on Measuring Decent Jobs for Youth, namely Chapter 2 (available at the end of this text): Concepts and definitions of employment indicators relevant to young people.
The guide distinguishes between 4 key dimensions of youth jobs (p.4-5):
‘Employment opportunities
Outcomes related to the creation of more jobs for target group at an individual level. The jobs can either be created for employees or for the self-employed, either as employers or as own account workers. Another key outcome refers to business development, as self-employment and entrepreneurship are the main focus of many youth employment interventions.
Employment quality
Outcomes focused on the ability of beneficiaries to achieve better labour market results, through social security provision, social dialogue, increased earnings and decent working time. Many young workers hold jobs of poor-quality in low productivity, low-income activities. These types of results are therefore especially relevant for projects targeting the informal sector and for livelihoods projects.
Employment access
Outcomes related to activating young people to enter the labour market, improving performance of the labour market and measuring the demand for labour and skills by employers. Outcomes allow the targeting of specific vulnerable or traditionally disadvantaged groups in the labour market, especially women and youth
Employment skills
Outcomes related to measuring the supply side of the labour market, young people’s skills and competencies. Key employability skills to be measured are inter-related and include basic skills including literacy and numeracy, technical skills or the ability of individuals to perform various tasks and core work skills which are also known as soft skills.’
Each indicator group is discussed and specified in the guide available here: ILO_Guide_Chapter2. We would like to encourage you to read the whole text since it provides readers with detailed description of the indicators as well as with navigation through the gained data and analysis.
It is important to have information about and to disaggregate the indicators according to age (for purposes of YOUTH IMPACT project it would be into 15-24 and 25-29 year), according to gender, and according the geo-social provenience of young people (rural/urban).
For further reading we recommend: Rihova_Using_Labour_Market_Information