Research Into Government Strategy On Unemployment Of The Youth With Low Academic Qualifications In Urban China

The problem of youth employment has become the common challenge that every country faces in the world. Statistics made by the International Labour Organization in 2003 showed that the number of unemployed youth accounted for 47 percent of the world's total unemployed population. In China, according to the "China's first survey report of youth employment" in 2005, the overall unemployment rate of Chinese youth aged from 15 to 29 is 9%. It is higher than China's current 6.1% social average unemployment rate. And among the unemployed young people, those with the academic qualifications obtained from vocational secondary school and junior high school account for the highest proportion, with the percent being 37 and 30 respectively. Obviously, a low academic qualification has become the biggest bottleneck of youth employment. At the same time, in China, the attention to the problem of youth unemployment is paid far from enough. But they are the more vulnerable groups. If the unemployed youth with low academic qualifications were long-term unemployed, and their problems could not be resolved promptly and effectively, they would become a big threat to the harmony and stability of the whole society. Therefore, to concern and resolve the unemployment problem of the young people with low academic qualifications should be an important task in adjusting China's social structure and social relations, safeguarding social stability, and promoting the healthy development of society.In China there are few concrete practices and little research literature about resolving the unemployment problem of young people. And the overwhelming majority of existing literature focuses on unemployment of young people with high academic qualifications, such as unemployment of university students. Studies on the unemployment problem of young people with low academic qualifications are quite few. Based on the situation, this study hopes to do some exploratory research to develop the study on unemployment problem of young people with low academic qualifications. At the beginning of the study, the paper analyzes many possible factors influencing the low-academic-qualification youth's employment, such as the qualifications and skill levels of young people, their family environment, the labor market environment, and the political institutional environment etc. Among those factors, the study believes that the most crucial factor leading to the problem of youth unemployment is the imperfect political and social environment that the youth with low academic qualification stay in. To make the research more practical, the paper introduces the theory of social capital as a theoretical support. In the study, the writer uses Putnam's understanding of social capital as the base theory, namely that social capital includes three elements which are trust, norm and network. Meanwhile, regarding the expansion of social capital theory by other scholars, the paper made a macro level understanding of social capital. So we regard social capital as "the political and social environment that include the social structure and can promote the development of rules."Therefore, we can see that the social capital theory makes the political and social environment facing the youth with low academic qualifications, which is difficult to measure, formulated through three more specific indicators that are "trust" social capital, "norm" social capital and the "network" social capital. Thus we can equal the political and social state of the environment stayed by the young people with low academic qualifications to their situation of social capital. In some sense, the imperfect situation of the former one means the lack of the latter one. The paper then does some specific analysis of the lack situation of the social capital of the young people with low academic qualifications, that is, respectively from the three aspects of social capital: "trust" social capital, "norms" of social capital and the "network" social capital. And at the same time, the strategies taken by the government to solve the problem of lack of social capital of the young people with low academic qualifications is brought about at the same time.Finally, in the conclusion part, the paper develops the understandings of the strategies taken by the government to build social capital in depth, namely, that the building of "trust" social capital is Qieru Kou, building "norm" social capital is the guarantee and building "network" social capital is the means. The three parts are not mutually exclusive, but complementary, and they jointly play the important role in addressing the unemployment problem of youth with low academic qualifications.