Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/177184 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 11380
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
The creation of job opportunities for the increasingly educated youth population is a major current policy challenge in sub-Saharan Africa, even though very little is known about the extent to which young workers in the region are satisfied with the employment they currently have. This paper aims to help to fill this latter gap by presenting an analysis of job satisfaction of youth aged 15-29 in four countries from Eastern and Southern Africa: Madagascar, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia. We estimate ordered probit models of the degree of satisfaction in a respondent's main job, using data from the School-to-work Transition Survey (SWTS). It turns out that while a majority of workers are satisfied with their work, a large minority are not. We find that being over-educated or under-educated for the current job is strongly and negatively correlated with job satisfaction in all four countries. With respect to employment status, we find that those who report having chosen to be self-employed are substantially most satisfied in all four countries compared to formal sector wage employees, after controlling for many other factors. Formal wage employees are more satisfied than informal employees in only two of the four countries. These results reinforce the case made by Fields (2014) for not assuming that all self-employment is a 'last resort'. They also raise questions about the quality of available wage jobs for young people.
Subjects: 
job satisfaction
young workers
Eastern and Southern Africa
JEL: 
I31
J28
O55
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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