Characteristics of Youth Labour Market in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka

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.