Youth bulge and stress in labor market entry: linking policy efforts and entry behaviors of prospective entrants in Cameroon

The relationship between population change and economic growth logically creates a key link between youth budge and labor market entry distress, resulting from labor supply-demand mismatch, necessitating diverse policy interventions. The paper seeks to understand the phenomenon of Cameroon youth bulge as a stress factor in labor market entry, and the link between policy efforts and labor market entry behaviors of prospective young entrants. A sample of 739 young graduates (51.8% males) was drawn from higher education policy intervention programme for information gathering. An instrument was validated to measure education policy efforts, self-efficacy, optimism, attitudes and intention levels, and qualitative and quantitative approaches employed in data analysis. Significant positive associations were observed among core variables; validating the proposed model of youth bulge and labor market outcome behaviors, and confirming the facilitating role of policy in entry behaviors. The predictive powers of behavior states on venture intent of youth cohort were confirmed and a gendered analysis of policy impact showed significant difference in favor of males except for optimism. Although policy intervention revealed hopeful results, qualitative analysis showed conspicuous gaps in policy formulation and implementation.