The Search for Good Jobs: Evidence from a Six-year Field Experiment in Uganda

One third of the 420 million young people in Africa are unemployed. Understanding how youth search for jobs and what a¤ects their ability to ...nd good jobs is of paramount importance. We do so using a ...eld experiment tracking young job seekers for six years in Uganda’s main cities. We examine how two standard labor market interventions impact their search for good jobs: vocational training, vocational training combined with matching youth to ...rms, and matching only. Training is o¤ered in sectors with high quality ...rms. The matching intervention assigns workers for interviews with such ...rms. At baseline, unskilled youth are optimistic about their job prospects, especially over the job o¤er arrival rate from high quality ...rms. Relative to controls, those…