Question
A large number of young people are leaving school but cannot find a job. What problems will the youth unemployment cause for individuals as well as for society? What measures should be taken to reduce the unemployment level among young people? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Sample answer
The world is in for a worsening youth unemployment, with its causes resembling their consequences. It goes without saying that youth unemployment needs to be tackled urgently, but this important task is anything but easy. However, if the microeconomic theory is of any use at all, it must include solutions to those problems which are affecting school leavers as individuals and society as the labor market.
In a time of the economic recession, there is always a high jobless rate among young people, compared to the overall unemployment rate. This may explain in part why a large number of young people who are leaving school find it difficult to get a job. Particularly, youth unemployment spells a variety of hardships in a society that is powerless to create jobs. As unemployment balloons, competition among young individuals for jobs also rises, hence further pushing the society in general to tighten its belt, among other unpopular measures. Being part of a vicious economic cycle , massive unemployment also carries an emotional toll, often too complex to define and too heavy a burden for the so-called 'scarred generation' to bear with hope and dignity. In view of this situation, if little or nothing could be done soon enough to reduce unemployment, the society's law and order would be at risk, referring, as an example, to a link between youth unemployment and youth crime.
Unfortunately, ways to reduce youth unemployment seem to be mostly slow and often ineffective, and worse still, widely divided. For instance, some governments decide to take austerity measures, contrary to the argument that to cut public spending in the presence of high unemployment would be to ignore the lessons of history that are certainly not in favor of young people looking for jobs. At another point, the expectation that private employers would be able to hire enough to bring youth unemployment down remains only an expectation and not a cure-all for graduate unemployment. Neither is entrepreneurship a promising option for graduate employment because the precarious nature of working for oneself does not suit everybody. On the other hand, not every school leaver acquires sufficient skills needed for the labor market, which implies that part of the long-term pro-job campaign should begin at school. Further, the supply and demand of jobs for young people are apparently farm from being in balance in many societies, as seen in some countries that face a lack of personnel in technology and natural sciences but have a surplus of individuals in human and social sciences.
Those are challenges for individuals and the society as a whole in the light of the current economic recession in which young graduates are being severely affected. Accordingly, efforts from all sectors should lead to the assurance that the next decade would be one of growth and not of high unemployment. Here are the problems, and the last thing to do is to embrace nature's cure and wait them out.
