Digital neighbourhood contexts in youth employment and competency frameworks

Digital connectivity is a sensitive indicator of socioeconomic change, and rapid assessment of neighbourhoodleveldigital infrastructure is necessary to more comprehensively understand the impacts on youth employmentpathways and competency development outcomes. This study contributes novel insights about the relevance of digitalneighbourhoods for supporting inclusive employment ecosystems and provides a foundation for investigating competencyacquisition dynamics in the context of urban-rural digital transitions. A mixed-methods approach was used to investigaterelationships between common digital accessibility indices calculated from network density metrics and employmentreadinessindices from corresponding youth population surveys in three dominant residential zoning types across threemajor urban clusters at regional scale. Data sources were municipal digital infrastructure records, youth digital literacyassessments, and employment statistics. The results suggest that neighbourhood digital density contributes strongly tothe response of employment opportunity indices and real-time connectivity data can act as a surrogate to track labourmarket change associated with competency-based education development and degradation. Overall, we find that lowcost,easy-to-use digital mapping tools can monitor youth employment readiness and changes related to community-leveldigital condition and educational support activity in three dominant neighbourhood typologies.