An Evaluation of the Peruvian "Youth Labor Training Program" - PROJOVEN

Date
Oct 2006
The "Youth Labor Training Program" (Programa de Capacitacion Laboral Juvenil - PROJoven) is an ongoing job-training program created in 1996 by the Ministry of Labor (Ministerio de Trabajo y Promocion del Empleo) in response to the precarious conditions of youth in the Peruvian labor market. The goals of the program are to improve employment opportunities of youth in poverty and to promote competition and higher quality of services in the vocational training system. In this paper, we present the main results of an evaluation of PROJoven impacts on program beneficiaries in terms of employment status (employed, paid employment and formal jobs), earnings (monthly and hourly) and weekly hours of work. The authors also provide an institutional analysis of the program, documenting the origins and rationale of the intervention, we explore how and why PROJoven was designed, and the political and economic environment at the time of its inception and afterwards.