A Study on the Status of Iranian Youth Employability

The research was done to identify the factors affecting youth employability, investigate youth employability and provide the best advices for improving youth employability. This project aims to answer these questions: “What is the best definition for employability?” “What features or scales can be utilized to measure Iranian young people’s employability?” “Is it necessary to provide indigenous scales?” “What is the relationship between employability and issues as academic and vocational education?” “According to the definition of employability, how is the status of employability of Iranian young people?” and “According to the research findings, how can youth employability be improved?” Quantitative (survey with 1500 samples) and qualitative (interview and focus group) methods have been chosen for answering these questions. Findings have shown that there is significant difference between the basic knowledge and employability scales and province location of youth; for example, youth who are living in developed or underdeveloped province have different level of employability. Furthermore, work culture (because of hardworking and perseverance not being as a value), financial deprivation (because of being deprived of knowledge or skill and starting up occupation), performance of educational system (because of inattention to vocational education and imbalance labor market) and instability macro-policy are major factors in decreasing employability of Iranian youth. Also, this research asserts that youth unreal assumptions about their status of employability and business environment have caused decreasing their employability.