Abstract:
This study attempted to compare unemployment based problems of youth in the formerly
war-affected Northern province and the country as a whole. Sri Lanka has been grappling
with the problem of youth unemployment for nearly four decades in which nearly 80 percent
of all unemployed in 2006 were youth (Ramani Gunatilaka et al, 2010). It denotes that the
problem of youth unemployment should be critically studied. The study was administrated
with four years of macro level data obtained from the Labour Force Survey
(LFS) from 2011 to 2014. This study found that Sri Lanka’s youth Unemployment rate was
recorded to be 14.7 per cent while it was 13.9 per cent in the Northern province in 2014. It
is interesting to note that although Northern Province is formerly war-torn Province, the
unemployment rate of youth is lower compared to some other Provinces such as
Sabaragamuwa with the highest unemployment rate of 21.3 per cent and Southern Province
with 20.2 per cent as the second highet unemplouyment rate. In addition, Gap between the
gender based Unemployment is larger in the Northern Province than the national level.
However, A positive trend in the Northern Province can be observed in female youth’s
unemployment rate as gradually reduced by 9.6 per cent where at the national level, it
declined by 0.4 per cent during the period of 2011 to 2014. It is 24 times higher decline in
the Northern Province. The largest share of youth unemployed have been waiting for a job
for more than one year in which the Northern Provincial situation is worse than the National
situation. Although Informal economy still plays a very big role in the creation of
employment opportunities. The share of workers in the private sector is lower by 10 per cent
in the Northern province than the National share. And, the the proportion of agricultural
workers in Sri Lanka continuously declining than the Northern province level. Share of
Males who engaged in agriculture in the Northern Province in 2011 declined by 8.3 in 2014
where it shows 1 per cent decline for female gender.
