Improving Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka: Insights and Strategies

Building on the Youth Labour Market Assessment published by Verité Research in 2018, this report focuses on a series of specific issues that represent key barriers to increasing youth employment and youth employability in Sri Lanka. Given the potential of youth entrepreneurship to serve as a key driver for increasing the labour force participation of youth, including young women, the current report also investigates key challenges and opportunities for increasing youth entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka. The report comprises three chapters. The first chapter contains four insights, which address several key questions that remained unanswered in the previous Market Assessment. The first insight outlines the importance of promoting English language proficiencies among youth in Sri Lanka. The second insight observes the constraints faced by NLET youth (that is, youth not in the labour force, education or training). The third insight focuses on enhancing youth self-employment in Sri Lanka by providing youth with the resources needed to set up as an Own-Account Worker. The fourth insight develops a case for transferring the funding of maternity leave benefits from the employer to state, in order to reduce the discrimination faced by women in the job market. Each of these insights concludes by providing recommendations and practical strategies for implementation. The second chapter provides an analytical review of the Thurunu Diriya project. The concluding chapter of the report includes the topline findings and an annotated bibliography of the selected literature.