Do Job Training Programs Motivate the Youth to Get Jobs?

We investigate the effect of participating in a job training program for youth on job-search efforts. The program the present paper focuses is a free job-training program for the youth, which is given by the Japanese government. The youth participating the program has to attend the program everyday in two weeks, and acquires job search skills through various group works. We conducted an original survey for program participants to ask job-search motivation at three time points: on the first day, the middle day and the last day of the program. We also conducted the survey for job seekers who do not participate the program. The results, based on Propensity Matching Method, show that the participants have higher job-search motivation and better prospect of getting jobs than non-participants do on the last day of the program. The results, based on panel estimation controlling for job-seekers’ unobserved effect, also show that the participants gradually improve the motivation and prospect during the training period. A follow-up survey further shows that the participants who improved their prospect of getting a job during the training period have higher probabilities of getting jobs after the program ended. These results suggest that a youth job training program improve a motivation to get a job and the improvement of the motivation lead to get a job.