Status of Employment in Ethiopia: Bahir Dar University Graduates Tracer Study

Abstract

Background: Both graduates and Higher Education Institutions are increasingly concerned with ensuring that their academic investment results in future employability. The FDRE Ministry of Education has targeted to reach $>$ 80\% of graduates with the first degree of the regular program employed with degree-relevant employment within 1 year after their graduation. Therefore, this GTS was carried out to explore the employability rate, the average time it takes a graduate to find employment measured in months and assess if the employed graduates were employed in their field of study of 2015 and 2016 Bahir Dar University graduates with a first degree, in general.

Method: The study was conducted in Bahir Dar University in 2015 and 2016 regular, first-degree graduates and stratified multistage random sampling was used to select respondents. Out of 4208 graduates, 867 graduates with a response rate of 82.5\% were selected to participate in the study. To determine the prevalence, the duration and the potential factors of employability graduates' in the labor market, both descriptive and inferential statistics were applied.

Result: Seventy-nine percent of surveyed graduates were gainfully employed, of which majority (93\%) was landing with degree-relevant jobs. Most of the employment rate was taking place during 1 to 6 months in duration and the overall average duration of unemployment was 5.08 months. Moreover, the graduates from the Institute of textile and fashion technology and College of Business and Economics have a shorter spell of unemployment (3.62 and 4.41 months) respectively.