The impact of soft skills training on female youth employment: evidence from a randomized experiment in Jordan

Matthew Groh, Nandini Krishnan, David McKenzie and Tara Vishwanath
Additional contact information
Matthew Groh: World Bank
Nandini Krishnan: World Bank
Tara Vishwanath: World Bank

IZA Journal of Labor & Development, 2016, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-23

Abstract: Abstract Employers around the world complain that youth lack the soft skills needed for success in the workplace. In response, a number of employment programs have begun to incorporate soft skills training, but to date there has been little evidence as to the effectiveness of such programs. This paper reports on a randomized experiment in Jordan in which female community college graduates were randomly assigned to a soft skills training program. Despite this program being twice as long in length as the average program in the region, and taught by a well-regarded provider, we find soft skills training does not have any significant employment impact in three rounds of follow-up surveys. We elicit expectations of academics and development professionals and reveal that these findings are novel and unexpected. JEL codes: O12, O15, J08, J16

Keywords: Soft skills; Youth unemployment; Randomized experiment; Expectation elicitation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

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DOI: 10.1186/s40175-016-0055-9

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