The policy system of youth employment is an important part of the national active employment policy. At present, the study of policy tools and their combined application of youth employment has important theoretical significance and practical value for increasing policy efficiency, avoiding policy blindness and one-sidedness, which can improve the national active employment policy. This paper studys the youth employment policy tools and their combined application in each province during the epidemic, and analyzes the characteristics and shortcomings of their policy tools, which can provide strategic reference and policy suggestions for improving the policy efficiency of youth employment in each province during the epidemic period and further promoting youth employment. An integrated analysis framework of policy objective-tool and NVivo11 Plus qualitative analysis software was used to conduct quantitative statistical analysis of 22 provincial- level youth employment policy texts before and after the epidemic. Four categories of policy tools were summarized including guidance and mobilization type, capacity improvement type, guarantee support type and supervision and evaluation type, which can be further refined as 14 policy tool items. On this basis, the structural characteristics and combined application of policy tools in different stages, provinces and policy objects were explored. It is found that the hub coordination effect of relevant functional departments in each province was more obvious role in the process of policy formulation and implementation, which played an active role in ensuring youth employment, guiding youth to establish a correct concept of employment, easing youth’s sense of panic about employment during the epidemic, improving the professional skills of youth employees and ensuring the stability of youth employment environment. In the future, all provinces should further tap demand to make policies more accurate and serve youth employment. It is suggested to enhance the overall combination of various policy tools, integrate various government and social resources, which can ensure youth employment in multi-functional dimensions and multi-time points. Meanwhile, we should constantly improve and give play to the synergistic linkage of policies according to the stage changes of epidemic prevention and control.
