Abstract:
Unemployment is a serious socio-economic problem that affects people of all ages in both
developing and developed countries. Ethiopia's labor market development is based on a
rapid increase in labor supply. Thus, in order to reflect on the current employment
situation and forecast future changes, it is necessary to analyze and identify the factors
that contribute to the youth unemployment situation. The main objective of this research
was to identify how socio-economic and demographic factors were contributing to
unemployment in the regional areas of Ethiopia. To achieve this objective two-level
logistic regression was employed. In this study, a total of 17,021 region youths nested
within 68 enumeration areas were considered from the 2020 region Employment and
Unemployment Survey (REUS) conducted by the Ethiopian Statistics Services (ESS) of
Ethiopia. In this study, multilevel logistics regression model was better fitted to the data
than single logistics regression model. The results of the intra-class correlation coefficient
(ICC) confirmed that there is variation in region youth unemployment across the
enumeration areas. The study revealed that region youth unemployment was significantly
varied by factors such as gender, age, educational level, kinship, and marital status
compared to 5% level significant. As a result, this study revealed that being male, 20-29
years age, being having of vocational and above educational level, being head of
household kinship role, being single marital status are more significant factors for being
an unemployed regional youth. Therefore, highlighting the need for intervention on
identified socio-demographic factors will address these issues and reduce regional youth
unemployment.
