Factors associated with time to employment among business, technical and vocational education and training (BTVET) graduates

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to assess the factors that are associated with time to employment among BTVET graduates in Uganda. It utilized secondary data that was collected by the Belgian Technical Corporation in conjunction with the Ministry of Education and Sports in 2017. The factors that affect the time to employment of respondents were analyzed using the Cox proportional hazards model and its adaptation to time to event analysis of discrete data. These methods were used in order to enable the researcher to not only examine the factors that contribute to the differences in employment rates but to analyze the causes of the differences in the time to employment with the analysis done using STATA 14. From the results obtained, it is clearly observed that there are significant differences in the rates of time to employment across factors such as the occupation that a respondent held before enrolling for the course referred to by the study (Chi-square =18.48, p= 0.001), and the method that was used to search for jobs (Chi-square = 14.66, p= 0.012). On the other hand, no differentials were observed in time to employment across the BTVET program that a respondent completed, whether the respondents moved from one geographical location to another in their search for jobs, income before training, region, training institute, and sex. At the multivariate stage of analysis, it was observed that there is a significant effect of the program that an individual completed on the time that they took to obtain employment after completing the course (Hazard Ratio=3.458, p=0.005). There were no significant effects on time to employment arising from geographical movement in search for jobs, income before training, region of residence, sex, the training institute, and the method used to search for jobs. The conclusions drawn are that the job search method especially by being assisted by the institute in applying for jobs as well as applying directly to employers has an effect on the time to employment and it is hence recommended that guidance be provided to BTVET graduates as to what methods are most appropriate when searching for jobs.