Exploring the career intention of unemployed youths to participate in skill development training

Unemployment amongst rural youths in India remains a critical and significant concern. This urgently requires stakeholders to address this pertinent issue by designing and implementing various skill development training programs to improve the employability of the educated unemployed youths in India. However, there is a problem with the active participation of the potential beneficiaries in the training due to their differing intentions. The previous models used to assess training participation suffer from self-reporting biases, making it difficult to determine the participant's actual intention. To address these difficulties, we examined TPB's predictive power in predicting unemployed teenagers' career intentions toward DDUGKY, a government-sponsored plan. PIA-selected convenience sampling was used to present a structured questionnaire to 518 jobless youngsters from three Andhra Pradesh districts. The Smart PLS 3 platform used PLS-SEM for data analysis. Attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control predicted career intention by 71.4 and training engagement by 88.2%. Our study, which employed TPB as a basic theory, had stronger predictive validity than previous training participation models. Policymakers, government agencies, and stakeholders creating and executing skill development programs to reduce rural unemployment can learn from the study.