Determinants of Urban Youth Unemployment: The Case of Wolaita Sodo Town, Southern Ethiopia

Despite government and development partner measures, Ethiopia’s youth unemployment problem has remained unsolvable. It produces numerous socioeconomic problems in the frugality of the country. Presently, the situation in Ethiopia, like conflicts, war and COVID-19- 19 are fresh reasons for adding youth severance in urban areas. The Sodo city is the largest city in the Wolaita zone where the government and development mates invest to reduce urban youth severance in colourful ways, though the problem increases over time. The idea of the study was to examine the factors that influence urban youth unemployment in Sodo City, Ethiopia. The intensity of this problem in Sodo city is high because it was a primary city and other affiliated reasons. To understand the problem, the study concentrated on three kebeles of Sodo city from seven kebeles using purposive sampling. To achieve the objectives of the study, primary and secondary data were employed. Primary data was collected through questionnaires, interviews, concentrated group discussions, and field compliances, whereas the secondary data was collected from a review of affiliated literature, government and NGOs, reports, exploration papers, books, journals, and other affiliated documents. A multistage sampling procedure was employed to communicate with 348 sampled urban youths. The Logit model was used to dissect the collected data. Retrogression analysis result of double logit showed sex of youth, entrepreneurial skill, job preference, age of youth, year of education, frequency of job hunt per month, use of credit and stakeholders’ donation were positive and significant determinants of urban youth unemployment with the dependent variable. Therefore, efforts should be undertaken to lower the rate of youth unemployment in urban areas by adding job openings for both the learned and uneducated youths. Thus, affirmative action should be considered for gender awareness; this is done by empowering women to engage in civic youth employment. In addition to this, the government should invest and encourage satisfactory credit service provision in the way of working the problems like high interest rates, inadequate supply and bureaucracy that are related to the use of credit services.