Virtual reality to alleviate youth unemployment in Nevada

Image: Pexels / Julia M. Cameron

Nevada is struggling with high youth unemployment. To reintegrate disconnected youth, the state is turning to virtual reality.

Many know Las Vegas primarily as a glamorous gaming oasis. A place for wild party nights or for trendy shows by famous artists. However, the desert city isn’t all glitz and glamor. Many teenagers and young people are unemployed. Many have little apparent career opportunities after leaving school. A new virtual reality program replenishes them.

Unemployment in Nevada hits young people hardest

With 2.3 million inhabitants, Clark County is the most populous county in the state of Nevada. It houses 72% of all residents in the state. In Clark County alone, there are currently about 46,000 young people and young adults aged 16-24 classified as “disconnected youth”. These are the young people not enrolled in school or looking for work.

The Guinn Center is a non-profit organization that examines major socio-political challenges for the state of Nevada. According to a recent report from the Guinn Center, these numbers are continually increasing. In this age group, Nevada’s unemployment rate is above the national average. No other age group in Nevada struggles more with unemployment.

Virtual reality to offer perspectives

For helping young people to regain a perspective on the labor marketthe West Charleston Library in Las Vegas uses virtual reality. It recently launched Employ NV Youth Hub and Teen Zone.

“The new Employ NV Youth Hub will provide additional entry points into the workforce for our young people by providing access to internships, pre-apprenticeships, mentoring, paid training and yes, JOBS, jobs,” said Assemblyman Steven Horsford during the inauguration.

The center aims to equip young people with the skills to enter the world of work. A key component of the program is a VR simulation to assist participants in their professional development. In the VR viewer, young people experiment real life work scenarios and obtain information on various activities. This is intended to help them find out which occupations interest them.

Soft skills training for young professionals

In addition to learning more about the daily work of firefighters, traders or public service and waste disposal workers, visitors to the Youth Hub learn various skills in VRhow to properly use a fire extinguisher.

The the industry often relies on VR training, especially for activities that are expensive to recreate in the real world or dangerous to learn. In Germany, carpenters and forest workers learn to use a chainsaw in VR and in Florida, a police station practices dangerous operations in virtual reality.

VR training also at the Youth Hub introduces participants to increasingly important immersive technologies of virtual reality and augmented reality.

“I think in the next 20 years or so we will be doing a lot of things virtually … simply because technology is on the rise and people definitely need to know how to operate these types of systems to actually navigate through the system workforce.” said Christopher Williams of Employ NV Youth Hub.

Immersive learning on the rise

Learning in virtual reality benefits primarily from greater immersion. The content of learning is not only cognitively understood, but also physically internalized. The VR environment allows the actual performance of an activity and supports the performance of human memory through visual stimuli. Researchers from the University of Maryland already demonstrated this in 2018.

The study shows that virtual reality environments increase memory. Using the Memory Palace method, the researchers proved this people who use VR headsets remember things more easily thanks to the improvement of spatial orientation and immersion.

Immersive media are becoming more and more interesting for universities as well. Start-up Bodyswaps offers soft skills training in virtual reality to practice, for example, in job interviews. Together with 10,000 students from universities in the United States, Canada and Europe, the company currently conducts studies to find out how virtual reality can be optimally used in universities.

Note: Links to online shops in articles can be so-called affiliate links. If you buy via this link, MIXED receives a commission from the provider. For you the price does not change.