 So I work for the US government. So I first need to give you my disclaimer. This is my own research This is not the policy of the US government It's a personal view, okay now On to real stuff. I am one of those people that Jim referred to as someone who's done a review so I've done a review of the evidence on Impact evaluations or other evaluation research experimental or quasi-experimental research on youth employment programs and so But I when I did mine first of all I tried to focus on low and lower middle-income countries other other reviews For example one that drives me nuts is a meta-analysis that included France Germany and Malawi. I didn't do that So because I think the economies are too different and the programs themselves are also very different And I frame mine within the context of structural transformation. So as Jim has already said you know the opportunities depend upon the employment structure and And I think the problem is an employment problem as a friend of mine who works in the Middle East says Youth need jobs, but so do their parents It's an employment problem. And if your economy is only this is these are average statistics from the ILO if your economy is only Generating enough employment so that 19% of all people who are employed can work in any kind of a wage job formal or informal The opportunities aren't going to be very good For anybody youth or non-youth so I would argue that if What what I'm trying to argue in this paper is if you focus your policy just on trying to get these jobs for youth Well, first of all not all youth are going to get them anyway so it's really a question of which youth get them and maybe it's also a question of whether they go to youth or adults and that if you stop trying to improve the earnings of the people in this sector which include agriculture as well as the informal sector that Daniel showed shows you then you have Left out a large share of the population so while I agree with Jim that countries should try to move their economies over here and And by the way why Is this gray rectangle so low in many countries? Well, if you think about the least least least developed thing region country island, whatever. What is it? Everybody sits at home and makes everything they need they grow it. They make it whatever there then What is a rich country a rich country does all of that production in firms because it specializes because specialization? raises productivity and makes you richer and So that's really what development is about it's about more modern firms that produce with more capital and better technology higher value things that it can sell and that people buy and You know, whatever it produces All of these jobs now all of these jobs aren't good and we can talk about labor rights and all those other things but you know You can't get here without getting more firms a lot a lot a lot more firms And that means and that tends to make you richer. So it's all about I it's I think the framing I'm on Jim's page that it's about the economy stupid as famous rather bald Democratic political consultant once said some time ago in the US Okay, so now just how do I frame it? The way I frame it is if you Took a course in economics and they would tell you that in the labor market there is demand There is supply and there is demand and as wages increase demand goes down and as wages increase supply goes up and you get an equilibrium and that's your wage rate and that's your employment and Everybody who wants a higher wage doesn't work And then they would tell you that if the supply increases And this is sort of like an entry-level labor market where everybody's pretty much the same if the supply increases Or you can think of this supply increase faster than demand You get a lot of people entering labor market, but there's a financial crisis So no jobs are being created whatever then if the wage rate doesn't fall Employment doesn't increase. So if the wage rate stays here, you know But you're over here all of these people in this group are Unemployed right and it but if the wage rate falls then you get all of these people employed and for these people tough Luck you have too high of a wage aspiration Okay, well, that's not really how life works, but especially not in a developing country because you know for various reasons There's a floor under the wage rate in Africa There tends to be a floor you could think of that as a minimum wage But you don't it have to think of it as a minimum wage You can just think of it as this is the cost of living and going to work in a city Which is where most of the firms are and you're not gonna go to work To get on the get dressed and get on the bus and go to work If you're not making enough money to pay for the clothes and the housing and the bus fare and some food For your family, right? You'll just grow stuff or your you'll sell stuff like Danielle's friends do or whatever So there's a there's an there's a floor under the wage rate So that means if this is the demand curve this many people are hired But what do you have is a whole lot more people who are qualified for this job all of these people probably Graduated secondary school and they all want this job even if it's not the best job they want it And so basically the firm doesn't care because it's an entry-level job So they hire this quantity and these people don't get the job Even though they look and are as qualified as these people right and so what do these people do? They become Danielle's friends or Luke's friends They either farm or they're informal traders or they do a mix of things right now what if I am a donor and I do a youth employment program and That trains people Gives them maybe more Increases the number of people who secondary graduates increases their ability to look for a job Gives them a bus fare to go to the urban area whatever it is. I do That's what I do. I give them some training or something something I help that I change their characteristics in some way that moves this supply curve out. Well, what happens? Well, we just have now be and see who qualify for the job want the job and don't get the job and Maybe what I've done is I've taken some people who are in a who are not youth and I've bounced them over to B And C and I've taken some youth and bounce them over to a I've just made a substitution about who gets a job I didn't increase any more jobs through my training program my youth employment program I called it right and so that's the problem with the framing of it's a youth problem Is that you try to change the characteristics of youth and it doesn't do any good in terms of the economy and more jobs You just change who gets the jobs and since you don't know who usually usually you don't know who didn't get the job You don't know who you substituted for maybe you substituted a rich youth For a poor person Supporting 18 people or maybe you didn't we don't know maybe you substituted a Young woman for a young man Maybe that's what you want to do because you think young women are more deserving when I was a young woman, I probably thought I was more deserving but You know you're you have to understand you're redistributing and you have to understand that at a cost per job of say 1500 or 2000 that's a pretty expensive redistribution okay, so what I focus on is what's your theory of change and You really need to You should invest in training if there are entry-level vacancies that exist and don't get filled So we can think about an industry that expanding. It can't hire enough workers It's doing the training itself. It can't train people fast enough or there's a collective action problem So it doesn't want to do the training and then have all the workers poached I mean that's sort of the justification for Investing in say it skills in Africa certainly the demand for skills in that area is increasing It might be the just there there are probably other sectors It's probably a justification for investing in construction skills. There seems always to be a shortage of skilled trades people in Africa, so There may be there are areas where there may be a justification for doing it But most job training programs don't even do that assessment and Don't even look at this question now But if your problem is there aren't enough jobs then you have to Invest in what I call the business climate and you have to increase the demand for labor all labor and especially Entry-level labor because that's what youth is Okay, I'm putting aside. I admit that I'm putting aside the earnings question and the labor rights question I think all of those are important for but not just for youth. They're important for everybody This again is an employment problem. Okay, so now I surveyed with this framing I'm going to show you the results of my surveys of all the research and how it falls together and With that framing you won't be surprised about my results. Okay, so this is a result of supply-side interventions for wage jobs and you know the ones in red didn't work at all the The ones in blue worked a little bit and the ones in green worked so you're gonna say well God Louise There's a lot of green. Well, there's more red and blue actually the result is only about a third of them were actually green and Most of the green ones cost a lot of money a lot of money So there are these surveys right of the literature that say oh What works it best is to throw everything at them. Well, you want to know how much that costs? 1500 2000 2500 a participant there's a program that everybody loves in South Africa called Haram Bay Do you know how much that cost 10,000 a participant? I'm just trying to think how many businesses could use that money and create employment, you know But anyway, these are very expensive programs. That's what I have to say Now we're not surprised by Kenya ICT. That's okay But Liberia has a per capita income of about five hundred dollars at that program cost $1,500 a participant that just doesn't seem like Scalable even those use and how many of these programs look for displacement? Zero Actually, there's one that looked for displacement. Do I have the Uganda one up here? I think it came in late. This is the Uganda one that was done at University College London and they had success and The earnings of the people of the participants were greater than the control group by 17 percent or something There was but however, they randomized the firms that got the people who got the training and it was 100% displacement 100% displacement That's a one that actually looked for it In France there was a program that Helped That provided like counseling. Here's how to get a job. Here's how to write a resume Okay, so they did it more intensively in some areas less intensively in other areas again They found displacement where they did it more intensively The results were poor where they did it less intensively those few people who got that they got jobs great far out Okay, let me just move through because I'm running out of time. I Did what most people don't do I tried to look at how you can create more jobs in firms What intervention should you do now? This only looks at existing firms There's and it doesn't look at youth because almost nobody does an intervention in a firm to get them to hire more youth They just actually most people who do interventions and firms don't even look and see if they expanded employment But the ones that do didn't ask whether they were young or not But since it's an employment problem, that's fine. Now. I guess what I really want to focus on is If you really want to get firms to hire more people you should work with larger firms because they're more likely to Be able to expand and to be able to To expand employment in a greater way So if you give larger loans to larger firms it works if you give small loans to micro enterprises, it doesn't Like you know if you give 50k to firms in Nigeria it works if you give 200 Dollars to firms in Uganda it doesn't maybe there's something in between that works But that's kind of lays it out and then one of the things I think and by the way all this formalization This is kind of nutty forget that and then but tax simplification does help although these are fairly weak studies not very experimental Um, there's more evidence since I did this on electricity access by the way the Center for Global Development has some um, and I guess what I would like to say is that um Also, it's clear from the work of van Rienen and other people with associated with the IGC that management matters a lot And that you can actually if you can improve management in large firms You can actually increase employment and that's something nobody's talking about for their youth employment policy Why not? I don't know Okay, the now i'm going to talk about um household enterprises startup and i'm only talking about startup I'm not talking about increasing earning. Why am I talking about household enterprise startup? That's the youth problem youth need to start them. They need to become one of danielle's people um And uh, you know we Well, never mind. Um I'm not dealing with agriculture here. Why am I not dealing with agriculture? Because nobody does programs And if they do them, they don't do an experimental evaluation almost like of I looked at 100 Almost 200 programs and two two actually dealt with rural areas one was chris flatman's one For ex-combatants in Liberia teaching them agricultural skills. It worked by the way I think it's up here Now I combine these supply and demand because it's kind of difficult especially when they combine But basically skills don't the main thing is skills don't work very well Finance works better Um for startup micro finance actually works for startups It doesn't help you expand though, but it does at least work for startups You know, there's a there's some cheap programs you've gone to educate and you've gone to Brock Ella These are cheap programs. This one is less than a hundred dollars a participant and it works pretty well Ah, that tells you something. It's an after school program It teaches it teaches young women the things that they should have learned in school But never mind and it also teaches them things like negotiation. Um, I think uh Soft skills comes out everybody everybody thinks oh my god youth. We got to get them a job Okay, we better focus on on t-vet. Okay Well, huh Actually, there have been several studies now that seem to suggest soft skills are much more important That's what's coming out of this whole thing if you don't want to be replaced by a robot Okay, I gotta run through this pretty quickly because I'm out of time. Does gender matter? Yes But it's complicated Okay, uh implications I think we need more research on how you succeed Uh in addition to more research on how to create jobs And what are the pathways and the bumps in the road who influences their thinking on economic opportunities? So they know where to look and and and they know they're going to be in the informal sector anyway Um, and so it's so we've got to increase the earnings. I think Rural areas needs work. Um I I think we need to look at the real skill constraints Everybody says well if we train them the firms will come and if we don't train the firms won't come. Oh my goodness Um Yeah, maybe we should try digital platforms task rabbit whatever Um, a lot of people are down on the gig economy, but some things may be better than nothing Um, we need to stop thinking that supply creates its own demand So I'm going to end with this quote by Lindsay Wallace from the mastercard foundation based on their own qualitative uh research In Africa on uh, what works having Said that um, the mastercard foundation because of their mandate is still focused focused on supply side But they're trying to at least focus on areas where where there are jobs and um, and I think I'll end with that Okay, thank you very much Youth there's youth Actually, I like the quote. I think I'll leave that up