Purpose: This study examined the influence of social media use on graduateness and the employability of exit students in South Africa. Design/methodology/approach: The study used quantitative and descriptive research designs to test the proposed hypotheses. An online survey was used to collect the data from a study sample. A sample of 411…

Young people face myriad obstacles in finding work, and more than 71 million are unemployed globally. Many of these youth have limited job search skills, poor labor market information, and difficulty accessing jobs, obstacles more pronounced for marginalized youth and first-time work-seekers. Digital professional platforms may give some youth a…

Activation policies are widely adopted to encourage labour market participation of unemployed youth, and yet they are poorly understood and monitored with regard to the causal mechanisms unfolding through their implementation. Activation schemes are often based on the carrot-and-stick logic informed by microeconomic job search theory, but…

The COVID-19 outbreak early 2020 has had a considerable impact on the global labor market. Many businesses closed down, constrained their working hours, reduced their staff, and/or limited their new recruitments. Many employees have been obliged to work remotely and interact digitally. Due to the pandemic, the unemployment rates have gone up to…

Although the Government of Ghana gives considerable attention to technical education to accelerate national development, some graduates remain unemployed for years after graduation. In this study, employability of mechanical engineering graduates from Sunyani Technical University of Ghana is presented. It assessed the employment status and…

A new 'Work & Skills' initiative is needed for people who are long-term unemployed. Next year there could be between 1 to 1.6 million people who have been out of work for 12 months or more. This could be the highest since the 1980s and will have drastic implications for families and whole communities across the United Kingdom (UK). There needs…

Digital competence is a transversal key competence increasingly required by the labour market as well as by the job search process itself, most of which has now shifted online. Individuals who have not developed the most basic digital technology skills are most at risk for long-term unemployment. We argue that to bridge the skills gap of…

Objective: This study reevaluates the effects of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of job search interventions on labor force participation. In the trial, various methods of job search interventions were included, of which about half were research-based JOBS (Job Opportunity and Basic Skills) interventions and the other half were practice-based,…

Unexpectedly, the duration of first unemployment among first degree holders has quickly increased in Rwanda after considerable loss of the skilled labour during the war and Genocide perpetrated against Tutsi in 1994. The time it takes a higher education graduate to land a first employment is a key indicator for the evaluation of and optimal…

Graduate unemployment has increasingly been the topic of research interest as it grows in many countries. In many such contexts, the massification of higher education and the global economic recession of the late 2000s explain the challenge. The situation differs in South Africa. Graduate unemployment rates are low owing to the high demand for…

The institutionalised categorisation of adults who are over 55 years of age, unemployed and low-skilled as "older" and "disadvantaged" may adversely affect their employment prospects and their self-esteem. This paper reports on the findings of a study that explored the experiences of a small group of such adults; in particular,…

Unemployment among young people in Russia remains a serious problem, and educational qualifications continue to be a deciding factor in the labor market. Creative strategies for escaping from unemployment are frequently used, but outside of self-employment education remains the path to successful employment. [This article was translated by Kim…

The experience of precarious employment is growing across the occupational spectrum and some scholars have predicted that there will be a corresponding rise in anger, anomie, anxiety and alienation amongst those affected. Exploring more intimately how precarity might be differently experienced and confronted, this paper bases itself on a dialogue…

We clarify how individuals actively interact with socio-cultural contexts to attain regular employment in Japan. Based on a large sample (N = 3,512) of part-time employed and unemployed college graduates (23-39 years old), we found that: Career decision making self-efficacy predicted job search; a lack of both hope and fulfillment motivated job…

This article provides a new account of American job seekers' individualized understandings of their labor-market difficulties, and more broadly, of how structural conditions shape subjective responses. Unemployed white-collar workers in the U.S. tend to interpret their labor market difficulties as reflecting flaws in themselves, while Israelis…