Persistently High Levels of Youth Unemployment in the 4IR Digital Society: A Structuration Theory Perspective

Abstract

The 4th Industrial Revolution entails the adoption and integration of information and communication technologies leading to an increasingly digital society. This article contributes to concepts and applications of structuration theory and unemployment in 4IR literature and highlights research on societal barriers to digital transformation resulting in youth unemployment. We argue that social strata and socio-economic factors can have significant consequences for unemployed young people. These factors create and exacerbate existing divides that hinder equal access to the benefits of an increasingly digital world. The study findings reveal that one of the biggest challenges faced by most countries, is ensuring that the growing cohort of unemployed youth, with low digital literacy skills and little or no enabling resources, are given the opportunity to participate in the rapidly developing digital society. Technological advances, resulting from the 4IR, need to be better understood by using enabling concepts such as structuration theory. The article enhances a deeper understanding of the impacts of the 4IR in a developing country context and may offer insights into how policies and initiatives need to be revisited to address problems such as high youth unemployment. The 4IR is disrupting traditional economies and employment opportunities at an international level, but there are subtle differences from a developing country perspective. This article’s relevance is its contribution to structuration theory and its application within the literature on the 4IR. There remains an absence of understanding how best to encourage active citizen participation in the 4IR, especially in developing states with high levels of inequality. We conclude by presenting policy recommendations.