NRMT90003 Research Proposal: Causes of Youth Unemployment Analysis

This research proposal aims to identify and analyze the causes of youth unemployment, focusing on skill mismatch, lack of education, limited capital access, and entrepreneurship. The study acknowledges unemployment as a significant global issue with severe social and economic consequences, particularly affecting the youth. The research objectives include understanding the role of skill mismatch, the impact of inadequate education and entrepreneurship, and the effects of limited capital access on youth unemployment. The proposal outlines a detailed research methodology, including research philosophy, approach, design, data collection methods, and ethical considerations, with an anticipated completion time of 24 weeks. It formulates research questions and hypotheses to guide the investigation and suggests potential solutions to mitigate unemployment and foster socio-economic change, contributing to the ongoing discourse on labor market dynamics and youth empowerment. The research is based on the assignment brief for the course NRMT90003 Social Research Methods.

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Research Proposal
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS ON THE CAUSES OF UNEMPLOYMENT OF YOUTH;
FOCUSING ON SKILL MISMATCH, LACK OF EDUCATION, CAPITAL ACCESS,
AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Abstract
The aim of this study is to identify and analyse the causes of unemployment of youth. The
possible causes that are taken into account in this paper are skill mismatch, dearth of capital
access, lack of proper education, and unavailability of entrepreneurship. Unemployment is a
grave problem in the society and its consequences affect the society in a serious manner.
Unemployment is a serious problem that creates economic problems either directly or
indirectly. Moreover, youth unemployment is a global issue. The nations remains in a great
pressure due to the social and economic problems caused by the unemployment. The purpose
of the paper is to find certain root causes of the unemployment and finding solution to reduce
those causes so that the society will be benefitted. The unemployment should be reduced as
much as possible to avoid any sort of social revolution. The paper also examines the
importance of these causes to provide employment to the youth of the world. An elaborated
research methodology has been carried out that would lead the research process in the right
path. It can be assumed that the research will take a span of 24 weeks to be completed.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction:........................................................................................................................4
1.1 Background of the study:.............................................................................................4
1.2 Statement of the problem:...........................................................................................4
1.3 Rationale of the research:............................................................................................4
1.4 Research aims and objectives:....................................................................................5
1.5 Research Questions:....................................................................................................5
1.6 Research Hypothesis:..................................................................................................6
2. Literature Review:..............................................................................................................6
2.1 Unemployment of youth:.............................................................................................6
2.2 Concept of the effect of skill mismatch on unemployment:........................................7
2.3 Concept of the effect of lack of proper education on unemployment:........................9
2.4 Concept of the effect of lack of capital access and entrepreneurship on
unemployment:.......................................................................................................................9
2.5 Literature gap:...........................................................................................................11
3. Methodology:....................................................................................................................11
3.1 Research philosophy:.................................................................................................12
3.2 Research approach:....................................................................................................12
3.3 Research design:........................................................................................................13
3.4 Data collection method:.............................................................................................14
3.5 Sampling method and sampling size:........................................................................14
3.6 Data analysis:.............................................................................................................15

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3.7 Time table:.................................................................................................................15
3.8 Ethical consideration:................................................................................................16
3.9 Research Limitations:................................................................................................17
References................................................................................................................................18

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1. Introduction:
1.1 Background of the study:
Many researches have been done previously to determine the causes of the
unemployment. One such study has been done on Pakistan, a developing country.
(Maqbool et al., 2013) where the prime focus was to apply Autoregressive Distributed
Lag (ARDL) approach to determine the causes of unemployment. Like Pakistan, in many
other developing countries, unemployment persists in the society like a chronic disease.
In another study, it has been found that youth unemployment is a severe socio-economic
problem in most of the European countries (Eichhorst, Hinte & Rinne, 2013). Thus,
unemployment is a global issue.
1.2 Statement of the problem:
In the recent time, the issue of unemployment has become very challenging as
well as significant. The association of unemployment and lack of capital access,
entrepreneurship, and education has been demonstrated in many studies. Besides,
skill mismatch is a primary reason behind the unemployment issue as severe skill
mismatch leads to make a prolonged adjustment in the labour market which reduces
the job creation and enhances the chances of unemployment (Otekhile & Zeleny,
2016).
1.3 Rationale of the research:
The importance of the new job creation and enhancement of the employment have
widespread the social and economic affects. The majority of studies have ascertained
data on the challenge of national labour market for the existence of high youth
unemployment. The cost of unemployment for a youth is too hard to affect the

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youth’s standard of living. This research will focus on the causes of unemployment as
prolonged unemployment cause psychological disorder and may lead the youth to
commit suicide (Milner, Page & Lamontagne, 2014) and it robs the economy of
talents (Beblavý, Marconi & Maselli, 2017).
1.4 Research aims and objectives:
The aim of this study is to understand the determinants of unemployment of
youth and how these determinants affect the social and economic environment.
The research objectives are:
i. To understand whether skill mismatch has any role in the unemployment of
youth
ii. To find out whether the whether lack of proper education and entrepreneurship
have any influence on the unemployment issue
iii. To check whether paucity of capital access affects the unemployment problem
iv. To suggest the probable solutions by which the society can eradicate the
problem of unemployment that would directly result in the employment
increase and change in the labour market (Okoye, 2017).
1.5 Research Questions:
RQ1. What is the role of skill mismatch for the issue of unemployment?
RQ2. What is the impact of improper education and lack of entrepreneurship for
increasing unemployment?
RQ3. How does the shortage of capital access cause unemployment?

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RQ4. What are the probable means by which these determinants of unemployment
can be reduced to bring the socio-economic change?
1.6 Research Hypothesis:
The null hypothesis against the null hypothesis is described below:
H0: The impact of the causes (skill mismatch, lack of education, shortage of
entrepreneurship, and paucity of capital access) addressed in this research paper will
not result unemployment.
H1: The impact of the causes (skill mismatch, lack of education, shortage of
entrepreneurship, and paucity of capital access) addressed in this paper will result in
the unemployment.
2. Literature Review:
The literature review aims to provide emphasis on the various aspects and
elements that have been explained by the other researchers on the similar topics. It is
useful to obtain extensive level of thought with the help of which an idea about this
topic would be attained. The key points of this research paper have been described as
follows:
2.1 Unemployment of youth:
Youth unemployment means joblessness of young people who are mostly
fresher and/or have just completed their studies. Youth are far more affected for this
employment crisis than the elder people. Most of the researches have highlighted that
the education and skill sets are not suited for most of the private jobs and these do not
match with the employment opportunities in the private sectors (Demidova, Marelli
& Signorelli, 2013). Another part of the society also thinks that even if there is job

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opportunity, the absence of adequate job seekers actually catalyses unemployment
(Sir, 2017). The long-term unemployment among the youth actually make them
hopeless and the issue of unemployment actually diminishes the urge to keep looking
for new job opportunities. Unemployment is the most harmful demotivating factor
that makes the youth a discouraged workers. Dependency on jobs from an urge to
earn money and to make a career is the beginning of joblessness. Young people are
very important stakeholder of any society (Salami, 2013). There are many
complicated causes behind the youth unemployment. The quality of the candidate
and the education of irrelevance are the root causes of unemployment (Zimmermann
et al., 2013).
2.2 Concept of the effect of skill mismatch on unemployment:
Skill mismatch can be defined as the space between a candidate’s job skills
and the present demand in job market. It is a challenge to the path of employment and
it affects every layers of the society. The extent to which the labourers or the
candidates are hired in an occupation which is irrelevant to their skill sets or their
field of study is measured by the horizontal mismatch.
The readiness of work to graduate freshers is a headache for the government
as well as for the educational institutions. Industry needs resources based on general
employability skills but the education administrators provide degree programs which
are aligned with employers who are graduate. Thus the skills required by the industry
are not possessed by the freshers (Sir, 2017) and unemployment occurs in this way.
According to Restrepo (2015), the novel jobs require properly skilled
candidates but the number of these ideal jobs are limited in the industry and these
jobs hire only those candidates who possess the requisite skills. Thus, unemployment

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increases due to the shortage of ideal jobs and the mismatch in the desired skills in
the labour market. The technological progress in the job market is rapidly increasing
in the recent decades and coping with the technical skills by time is becoming
difficult for the labourers. The technological change imposes a drastic structural
change in the labour market, making a decline in the routine-cognitive jobs. Thus, the
competition is raising at a high rate in the labour-intensive sectors (Acemoglu et al.,
2016). This structural change creates a long-lasting problem of unemployment,
especially at the time of recession. Moreover, skill mismatch affects the labour
market in a larger way during recession as the demand for services and goods get
depressed.
An example of the unemployment in the U.S. has been depicted in the Figure
1 which shows the percentage of job decline from 1996 to 2015.
Fig. 1: The employment rates for various occupational categories in U.S. (Restrepo,
2015)

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2.3 Concept of the effect of lack of proper education on unemployment:
The lack proper education means poor quality education. It is also a primary
cause of poverty. The poor quality education is controlled by certain factors. If the
management of the educational organisations do not implement proper and updated
educational methodologies then there will be a gap between the industrial
requirements and the available skill sets of the candidates. The traditional theory
oriented education is another important cause which stops the candidates from getting
the novel jobs. The other probable factors for poor education ("Poor quality
education and care", 2018) are few qualified educational instructors, inadequate
conditions to provide practical knowledge, and learning anything in an unsettled
environment. In addition to that, after completion of study, self-review is very
important which is absent in most of the educational organisations. Today’s poor
education leads unemployment (Görlich, Stepanok & Al-Hussami, 2013).
2.4 Concept of the effect of lack of capital access and entrepreneurship on
unemployment:
The entrepreneurship is the name of starting a new business by one’s own
design, thought, and management. The person who starts the entrepreneurship is
called an entrepreneur. The entrepreneurship can be classified into two types which
are as follows -
i. Necessity-based entrepreneurship where the entrepreneur has no option
left than earning a living and
ii. Opportunity-based entrepreneurship where the entrepreneur chooses to
start a business which is not borne.

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The entrepreneurial ability is a necessary requirement to start a new business
because entrepreneurship includes lots of risks and investments. The entrepreneurship
also determines the growth of the economy because it generates jobs and helps in
employment. For a progressive economy, there should be both researchers who
should research and entrepreneurs who should implement them. If the growth of the
economy does not match the requisite entrepreneurship opportunities then the chance
of unemployment will arise. Lack of entrepreneurship means lack of entrepreneurial
ability and lack of spirit to initiate an entrepreneurship business. If the focus is to
create a socio-economic environment then a galvanizing culture should be created
where the youth can think of creating new job opportunities rather than becoming job
seekers only (Salami, 2013).
The capital access implies the availability of capital in the hand of people. If
the access of capital is increased in the hand of the people then the number of
entrepreneurship will also be increased. To enhance the industrial production, the
manufacturing giants have potential capital needs. If the capital access is increased
then the scope of investment will also be increased and big firms will invest for new
projects and thus they will hire new people and as a result, employment will be
increased. Therefore, lack of capital access will inversely affect employment. Capital
access can make a layman an investor and even an entrepreneur. Access of affordable
capital can make the difference between failure and success for entrepreneurs. The
supply of loans will help in boosting the business. Moreover, micro and small
businesses will be benefitted if the funding is raised. Providing capital access to
enterprises will create more jobs and ultimately the economy will be stabilised
(Capital Access, 2018).

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2.5 Literature gap:
The gap is the missing area or piece of the research literature which has nit
been acknowledged in the previous researches and the area which remains
unexplored. It could be the research method, the sample, or the research variable. The
literature gap of a particular research defines the gap that has not been taken into
account in the previous researches of that particular topic. The aim of any research is
to address the gap in the literature and then to fulfil that gap. An exhaustive review
can help to find out the gap. Fulfilling the gap is the ultimate contribution that a
researcher can make for the research. In the present research, there has been numerous
researches have already been done on unemployment due to skill mismatch and
unemployment due to improper education. However, there is not enough study done
on the lack of capital access variable and ultimately the paucity of entrepreneurship
due to less capital funding. Thus, this research will address the driving factor of
unemployment like skill mismatch and improper education, focusing on the lack of
entrepreneurship for shortage of capital investments. Thus, this research gap will be
fulfilled in this extensive study (Albanesi & Şahin, 2018).
3. Methodology:
The research methodology tells which techniques and processes should be
used to conduct the research. It refers to the process that shows how to conduct a
research in a synchronised way. It helps to understand various types of techniques that
can be used in the research (Smith, 2015).