Young People Navigating the Labour Market Issues facing young people in accessing the labour market

How do young people find employment

The picture outlined above has had a significant impact on the school to work transition, but tells us little about the individuals’ experiences in navigating the labour market. In order to explore questions around the challenges related to job searching amongst young people, it is necessary to analyse research attempting to understand the way in which employees and employers locate each other. In doing this, the paper explores the significant differences that exist between young people classed as ‘insiders’ and those classed as ‘outsiders’. It also considers those that possess social capital who are further categorised as ‘privileged’.

The current labour market is a difficult place to navigate for a young person who has neither work experience nor experience in searching for a job. This section seeks to understand the ‘choices’ that area available to young people in selecting a job, and the ‘choices’ that these young people make. This takes into account the reality that not all young people have the same resources when it comes to job searching: and that this determines the extent to which they can access the labour market efficiently and achieve improved outcomes.
It has been well documented that those who are most successful at finding employment have higher social capital (Kraak, 2013; Nudzor 2010; Schoer et al., 2012; Seekings ed. 2012). The concept of insiders and outsiders, and the implications for job search behaviour, is further nuanced in research from Seekings (2012a) where they suggest that in addition to insiders and outsiders there is also a category referred to as privileged youth. Considering young people in the urban areas, Seekings provides the following definitions in terms of each of these three categories:
Table : Categories of Urban Youth

Privileged	Youth from more affluent minorities
Insiders	Youth from less affluent neighbourhoods, but who share advantages with privileged peers either through social capital or proximity to employment opportunities
Outsiders	Youth from informal settlements, mostly failing to complete secondary schooling and lack close connections with people who are employed

Reference: Adapted from Seekings 2012a
More often than not, the privileged and insiders are more easily able to find employment while their counterparts, ‘outsiders’, constantly struggle: some can only find interim work, jobs that are unrelated to their field of study or interest and many do this work without an intention of continuing in this employment (Mourshed et al., 2012).
This section explores the strategies that are used by different groups of people and the effect that this has on the outcomes realised – that is their chances of securing employment. The three main employment strategies, or channels, that are pursued by young people are: formal channels, direct application channels and networks. These channels are defined below:
Table : Employment Channels

Formal channels	Newspaper advertisements, employment agencies and learnerships
Direct application	Gate of factories, farms, private homes, as well as waiting at the side of the road
Networks	Referrals, making use of friends and family connections

The research suggests that formal channels are more likely to be used by those individuals with higher education/skill levels and possibly some work experience. This provides them both with a basis for developing a CV and applying for a job, and may contribute to an increased confidence with respect to completing a formal application.

The research on the unemployed and their job search behaviours suggests that the majority of unemployed rely on direct methods: it is stated that ‘place to place’ – that is, that young people literally walk from place to place looking for employment (Bhorat et al. 2001; Dinkelman and Pirouz, 2001; Kingdon and Knight, 2001a). However, this method appears to have a very low success rate, and the majority of these young people struggle to gain employment, and remain unemployed.
Yet Schöel explains that, as these young people are not embedded in local networks, they have little choice and are forced to engage in direct methods, explaining why this strategy is made use of - despite the limited success achieved with this approach. The research also indicates that searching strategy is conditioned by household structure: That is, those not searching for work live with those not searching for work, and of concern is that these individuals that are not searching for work are more likely to be from larger households, and in poorer households concentrated in rural former homeland areas. This is explained by the reality that these young people have the lowest number of contacts in the labour market as these individuals live in households where there are other individuals who are also not employed and not searching for work. These individuals therefore have the weakest degree of attachment to the labour market (Dinkelman and Pirouz, 2001).
Conversely, those searching for work generally live with others searching for work, suggesting that if an individual comes from a household where individuals are employed, this person is more likely to find employment. Research suggests that there may be multiple reasons for these young people finding employment other than having been forced to look for work by the household: these young people can ‘learn’ lessons as to how to look for work from other household members who can share their own knowledge and experiences about ways to find employment. Further it means that there is a job search culture in the home and others in the household may have used networks as a job search strategy (Schöel 2006).
Critically these young people have access to contacts in the labour market and can therefore make use of the third channel; that of using networks as a strategy. This third channel is thus reliant on being embedded in a locally defined social network and having a high level of household employment and local contacts, which explains why the young people who rely on social networks find themselves in households where other household members are more likely to be employed as this enables the jobs searcher to rely on friends and family to gain access to the labour market.
These individuals are found to have further levels of success as they are able to make use of a mixed strategy including formal, direct and networks..
The findings highlighted above are considered crucial to understanding the way in which young people navigate the labour market. The relative success of each of these channels is highlighted in the table below which shows the results of four studies into job searching behaviour conducted in the last decade. The figures indicate the percentage of respondents in each survey who successfully used the three main employment channels to find work⁴:
Table : Employment channels: various South African surveys (2000–2006) (%)

	KMP (2000)	CAPS (2002/3)	DV (2004)	SAYPS (2006)
Formal	14 %	16%	28%	22%
Direct	20%	16%	27%	14%
Networks	66%	68%	46%	64%

Sources: As extracted from Scheor et al. (2012) Khayelitsha/Mitchell’s Plain (KMP) survey, Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS), Duncan Village East London (DV) survey (Duff and Fryer, 2005), and South African Young People Survey (SAYPS).
The above highlights the importance of networks in accessing employment, and the relatively mixed results experienced in terms of the other channels (noting that Duncan Village results show greater levels of success in formal channels, and relatively lower in networks). This finding was further emphasised by Schöel (2006) who, using econometric analysis, demonstrates that the lack of social capital restricts individuals in their search techniques and that those with contacts in the labour market increase the likelihood of using social networks than using active search techniques (direct and formal).
The importance of networks reinforces the issue highlighted in the introduction to this paper which pointed to the disparity between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, as discussed above. The extent to which young people have access to networks is largely contingent on the background of the individual and particularly factors such as the number of individuals that work within their household and immediate community, as well as their access to resources.
The research by Seekings (2012a), uses the Cape Area Panel Study data, and suggests that more affluent minorities belonging to the urban privileged category typically first find work whilst at school or college generally in restaurants, guesthouses, weekend craft markets and shops. These individuals describe finding casual work as easy, ‘as long as one is not too selective’. They take the approach of ‘starting low’, doing odd jobs, and then working their way up. Most of these young people secure work through connections, through people they know. These people understand that sending a CV to a company won’t secure a person a job, and that there is a need to speak to the manager on a personal basis. The research suggests that they understand that there is a need to give a personal display of trust and affirmation. For these people, having an education was not as important to their ability to get their first (often casual) job, as was their understanding about how the labour market works: what employer’s value, and how to ‘sell’ their labour or services. Fundamentally, they understand what constitutes a ‘work ethic’, and their expectations are matched in terms of earnings and the work that is required of them.
Urban insiders are less likely than the privileged category to gain much work experience whilst at school, but having left school they move from job to job, trying them out, before settling on what seems like a long-term opportunity. Their first work tends to be for larger firms, as compared to their more privileged peers, and more often in sectors such as retailing and services rather than in manufacturing (Seekings ed. 2012). They too access jobs through connections, but their connections tend to be employees at these firms rather than owners or managers.
These two groups of people have the advantage of knowing people in the labour market - particularly the ‘right’ kind of people. Either they know owners of companies, or people that work within companies where they could find employment. Privileged youth directly know owners/managers of smaller firms while the insiders know a number of employees who already work at larger firms. Existing employees provide recommendations, and pass on useful information on potential vacancies.
Urban outsiders differ quite considerably from the urban privileged and urban insiders as they lack the initial advantage of possessing social capital, which is difficult to acquire without attending the “right” schools and social clubs, or living in a particular neighbourhood. These individuals struggle to find employment; and consequently fewer have held any sort of job. Those who have dropped out of school have expressed the desire to obtain additional training and access to decent jobs, but research suggests that they lack any sense of how to navigate into the labour market. As outsiders, they lack the skills to approach a manager and demonstrate that personal affirmation of trust, which the affluent so easily manage. In the absence of options, these young people resort to sending out CVs and going door to door in hope of someone employing them, despite the evidence that this is an ineffective searching mechanism (Schoer 2006, Duff and Fryer 2004).