One of the demographic segments most affected in recent years, in terms of job placement, has been that of young people whose ages fluctuate between 14 and 25 years. These young people face the highest unemployment and
underemployment rates by income.
51-insertion-of-young-people-in-the-labor-marketThere are several explanations for this phenomenon: the demographic explosion of the 1970s and the increase in the activity rate; the deterioration of the quality of education; the increase in youth in the cities due to migrations from the Peruvian highlands to the capital cities, mainly Lima; among other.
Table 1 shows the difference between the unemployment and underemployment rates faced by youth and adults in Metropolitan Lima and the rest of urban areas.
A worrying aspect is that unemployment is higher among young people who have had access to some type of training (see Table 2). This, possibly, due to the poor quality of the training courses, which is manifested in the low credibility of the employers regarding the ability of these courses to increase the productivity of their workers,
this being consistent with the low levels of training. of young people in companies (1.6%).
Due to this and other factors, the ProJoven youth job training program of the Ministry of Labor and Social Promotion (MTPS) emerged in mid-1996, with the aim of alleviating the limited employment opportunities facing this segment of the population. In this sense, the MTPS has set out to promote the design of courses that respond to the existing demand in the market, to avoid, in this way, problems of over-education in capacities not required or that do not meet
minimum quality standards.
This is what the program aspires to. However, the fulfillment of such objectives must be verified by means of scientific methods that allow us to affirm that the expected results on variables such as labor income and the number of hours worked by the young person trained are, in fact, being fulfilled.
The program and its objectives
The ProJoven program trains young people in the development of specific activities and comprises two phases: technical training and job training. The first has a duration of 3 months and is in charge of the training entities (ECAP), which design courses with characteristics that respond to the needs of the companies, prior coordination with the latter. The second corresponds to internships and is paid by the contracting company, and implies a bond with a minimum duration of three months.
The ECAP selection process involves, in its first stage, a pre-classification process in which the previous training experience, administrative capacity, management capacity and human resources that ECAP has are evaluated. Those who pass this process must submit course proposals that have a proven demand in the market.
The design of the program assigns to the State the functions of promotion, financing, contracting and supervision of training services and leaves the direct provision of the latter to public or private entities, which compete with each other, and the one offered by the course is the winner. of higher quality and lower relative cost.
In this way, it is intended to achieve two fundamental objectives: to improve young people's job opportunities (productivity and employability) and to promote the development of a supply of high-quality training programs that respond to market demands.
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