IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/adbewp/021528.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Youth, Labor Market Dynamics, and the Role of Entrepreneurship in Bhutan

Author

Listed:
  • Carlos Alberto Coca Gamito

    (Asian Development Bank)

  • Silvia Garcia Mandico

    (Asian Development Bank)

Abstract

Young people in Bhutan face rising rates of exclusion from employment, education, or training, and limited access to quality jobs, despite gains in education. Entrepreneurship is often viewed as an alternative pathway, but most youth-led ventures remain necessity-driven, informal, and short-lived. Using data from the 2018–2023 Labor Force Survey and the 2024 Jobs and Skills Survey, this paper examines youth entrepreneurship dynamics, including motivations, earnings, productivity, and sectoral patterns. Findings show that opportunity-driven entrepreneurs—especially young women—achieve higher earnings and productivity, but few business ventures by young people transition beyond the early stages. A shift from necessity-driven to opportunity-driven entrepreneurship could yield economic gains equivalent to 1.4% of gross domestic product. Realizing this potential requires gender-responsive, stage-specific support and embedding entrepreneurship within a broader strategy for decent work and inclusive growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos Alberto Coca Gamito & Silvia Garcia Mandico, 2025. "Youth, Labor Market Dynamics, and the Role of Entrepreneurship in Bhutan," ADB Economics Working Paper Series 799, Asian Development Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:adbewp:021528
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.adb.org/publications/youth-labor-market-entrepreneurship-bhutan
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:adbewp:021528. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Orlee Velarde (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eradbph.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.