Analysis of the determinants of graduate employment status.

Abstract

The main purpose of the study is to investigate the determinants of graduate employment status with a case study of Nakasero considering socio-economic factors including age, sex, university or institution attended, course done, year of graduation, class of degree, retakes, knowledge of job market and whether one was an entrepreneur in school. This study was prompted by the fact that most youth in the country are either unemployed, self-employed or disguisedly unemployed therefore this research is to show the factors that influence employment status and some solutions to unemployment. The research was conducted through reading research from studies done by other people and reports written by other researchers. Primary data was used where questionnaires were given to a sample of 120 respondents who in this case had to be graduates. The data was entered in excel and analyzed using Stata. It was found that majority of the respondents agree that some of the general allegations for example tribe (59%), professional networks (65%) and connections (68%) influence graduate employment status in most of our communities and not only Uganda as these are some of the research points of other scholars. These findings are emphasizing the main problems faced by graduates as they try to find work and also show which areas specifically need to be fixed if there is to be any reduction in graduate unemployment as the research proves that majority of the graduates are unemployed (54%). In conclusion there was a statistically significant relationship between the socioeconomic factors and graduate employment status. When the statistically significant variables were subjected to regression, graduates that were employed were found to know two languages, married, Pentecostals and Muslims with a CGPA of 2.80-3.59.