The fate of the employment programs announced by the government in recent years, particularly since 2016, is still unknown. It is unclear whether they have achieved their objectives and succeeded in employing the announced numbers, and how much money has been spent on them. This is especially true given that previous and current programs were allocated large sums, ranging from 100,000 to 80,000 dinars per program. Before repeating this experiment, it is important to evaluate these programs to ensure their feasibility and success, as well as the seriousness of the parties involved in implementing them in both the public and private sectors. It is also important to identify the shortcomings that have hindered the achievement of their objectives to avoid recurrence.
The adoption of 260 dinars as the "minimum wage" as a monthly wage for beneficiaries of the program recently announced by the government may constitute an obstacle for many young job seekers to join the program, as it is considered a low wage. It would have been better to negotiate with each sector regarding the level of wages for each specialty, rather than leaving the matter vague. There are many specialties included in the program that deserve wages higher than the minimum wage, and their market value confirms this. Therefore, including them, like others, in the unified condition that requires wages to be no less than the minimum wage will encourage employers to be satisfied with paying only the minimum wage, which will frustrate job seekers’ desire to accept jobs in these specialties.
On the other hand, many of the job opportunities offered by employment programs are usually not sought by Jordanians due to their unattractiveness, either due to low wages or the lack of legal protections and decent working conditions. Consequently, it is unlikely that job seekers' views and attitudes toward these opportunities will change unless these imbalances are addressed, particularly by improving working conditions, ensuring legal protections, and raising wages.
To ensure the success of employment programs that require some form of training, these programs must be aligned with the actual technical requirements of employers. This can only be achieved through the active participation of employers and their representative organizations in developing and implementing these programs. Otherwise, the outcomes of these programs will be unacceptable to employers and will not meet their needs, as was the case with previous programs.
Employment programs cannot achieve the desired results if they do not take into account the nature of the specializations and characteristics of job seekers. It has been proven from previous programs that failure to take this aspect into account led to the random display of jobs that did not match the specializations and ambitions of job seekers, and this was one of the most important reasons for their failure. At the same time, these employment programs must be accompanied by effective services in the field of guidance and professional counseling, about the nature of the opportunities offered, their features and the extent of their suitability for job seekers, each in his specialization, and about the required experiences in each of them, as well as the skills required for the work and how to acquire them, and providing the entities that enable the see
