Every year, thousands of young people are graduating and looking to enter the workforce all over the world. However, an unfortunate reality for those of us born on the African continent is that jobs tend to be incredibly hard to come by. As a result, rather than having the prospect of immediately entering the job market and staring your professional journey; what awaits many of us is many months of not years of sitting around hoping and praying for any kind of work.
The job market sucks, that is just the reality and there isn’t much we can necessarily do about it (at least in the short term). High levels of unemployment are sadly the norm in many African countries, with younger Africans especially making up a large portion of the unemployed.
Due to the shortage of work opportunities, there is often a lot of competition between candidates for any kind of job opportunities. It is not uncommon for employers to put up an advert for a single position that they are looking to add to their company; only for them to be flooded with hundreds (even thousands) of applications for that single position. Thus is the desperation felt by so many jobseekers.
This imbalance between jobseekers and employers means that employers have all the power when it comes to negotiations over things like salary, work hours, etc. Meaning, those of us considered lucky enough to even receive a job offer, can typically expect lower than expected pay and long hours.
As a result, despite whatever qualms employees may have with the conditions stipulated in their work contracts, they are forced to take these jobs because they are desperate for any kind of work. I have observed numerous instances where my friends have been presented with job opportunities but have received disproportionately low salaries.
In many cases, employers take advantage of the high levels of youth umemployment to offer jobs without any kind of salary whatsoever. They would just slap on the “internship” label and claim that jobseekers could benefit from the “experience” of working for them. However, the unlucky individuals who accept these internships are typically expected to meet the same responsibilities as full-time employees, despite not even receiving a salary for all their hard work.
Third-World struggles
Typically discourse around job markets in more developed nations such as the United States, China, South Korea, Japan, etc. You frequently see stories about employees complaining about being overworked. Rather than these countries facing issues of a lack of job opportunities, many workers suffer from receiving too much work from their employers.
While, it is important to not diminish the struggles faced by workers in these countries; I would be lying if I stated that there have been moments where I wondered how they could possibly complain, while being in such a privileged position. Due to that fact that, I know I would rather choose to be in their position a million times over, rather than the unemployment experienced here by so many of us.
Sometimes developed nations, job markets experience phenomenons that those of us in Third World countries could not even imagine. Such as The Great Resignation phenomenon that had taken place in the United States in 2022. Due to the shortage in the workforce at the time in the US, workers could leverage their skills to switch to much higher paying jobs. During the height of the Great Resignation, a record 4.5 million workers each month were quitting their jobs in favour of higher paying positions, according to CNBC.
While of course, even developed nations have faced issues in regard to high levels of youth unemployment, such as the trend in China of the so-called “full-time children.” Which is the growing trend of young Chinese graduates living at home with their parents, focusing on housework, rather than entering the job market due to the growing job scarcity for youth in China.
What can be done about this?
The reality is that things did not have to be this way. African countries have been blessed (some might otherwise say cursed) with an abundance of natural resources. Every year, billions of dollars are made through the extractions and sale of these natural resources.
The money earned from these resources should have been used to improve the lives of our people, however, that has not been the case. Rather than that wealth being used on things like infrastructure projects that would work to stimulate our economies, that wealth has been hoarded by those in position of power. In place of infrastructure, we have wealthy politician living in palaces and mansions; travelling around in expensive vehicles; sending their children to study abroad in elite Western educational institutions.
The unfortunate reality is that, at least in the short term, there isn’t really much we can do about this. It is no as if a broke university graduate really has that much power to completely upend the decades of corruption and economic mismanagement implemented by our governments.
Meaning that we are essentially left with no choice but to continue hobbling on from job application to job application. Working to improve your curriculum vitae as much as possible, building up as many connections as possible, and praying for some kind of breakthrough eventually. Selling over our youth in favour of the seemingly, never ending rat-race hoping for a brighter future for ourselves.
