Youth unemployment: A national scourge

Youth unemployment is an ever-increasing phenomenon in  developing countries. The problem of this kind of joblessness has reached such a terrible stage that it has become as explosive as a bomb on which we are sitting. The International Development Committee (IDC) of the House of Commons - the lower house of the UK parliament - has alleged, as they criticised the donor countries, in a recent report that they are not 'concerned' at management of such a dreadfully dangerous situation.
        Though some countries like the United States and Japan have improved the unemployment situation to some extent by overcoming the shock of worldwide recession, the situation of youth unemployment has not shown any satisfactory improvement. Such problems are prevailing even in the West European and Scandinavian countries. About 600 million youths will enter the world job market in the coming decade. But only 200 million youth job opportunities will be created in the entire private-public sectors by this time, meaning a miserable unemployed life for 400 million youths. It does not require much talent to realise how dangerous the world will be on being filled with hopeless, aggrieved and perturbed youth communities devoid of job opportunities.
       The most surprising of all is that even though the big donor agencies are pouring in much financial assistance in various manners and fashions to the developing countries, they are either less concerned or never concerned about the problem of  unemployment, nor are these attentive to the imperative of augmenting the employment situation in these countries. The IDC maintains that the donor agencies, especially the British government's donor arm Department for International Development (DFID), are less attentive in this regard. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) of the UN has forecast that world unemployment situation is gradually going from bad to worse.
        According to the ILO, about 61 million people in the world have lost job until now since the beginning of the world recession in 2008. This trend will continue in the coming years. The ILO has also observed that 212 million people will lose jobs by the year 2019. The number of the world's unemployed people currently is 201 million. It goes without saying that the principal losers in this will be the youth community. The condition of the huge number of young girls engaged in wage-less works in the family domain will be more miserable.
Moreover, the birth rate is very high in different parts of the world. Under these circumstances, it has appeared as a question to the IDC as to why the donors have in some places reduced procreation-health expenditures.
       It is to be kept in mind that the industry-based civilisation is now passing through a critical phase when the worldwide wealth distributional aspect is becoming more and more manifest day by day. It should not be difficult to understand that if the severity of unemployment increases with the problem of adverse wealth distribution in the developing countries, the intensity of social unrest will accelerate. It will go beyond the ability of the governments of these countries to check or keep under control tens of millions of aggrieved, unemployed young boys and girls. Truly, it is neither possible now, nor it will be possible in the days to come.
     In order to bring a nicely and properly fixed wage rate to a level of justice to satisfy the workers, the following three conditions will have to be fulfilled: firstly, the fulltime wage ought to be of that amount which is capable of meeting the basic needs of a worker. In other words, each and every worker can meet the general needs of himself/herself and his/her family by the wages he/she receives; secondly, after fulfillment of the basic necessities, the employee or the worker should enjoy the opportunity of earning more according to the nature, craftsmanship or technicalities of the work, efficiency, the quality of his produce and according to the differences in proportions he/she makes to the profit made by the employer. That is, the efficient, skilled and workers engaged in risky economic activities need to get more;  thirdly, the wages should be determined under the above two conditions on the basis of free will and voluntary mutual understanding between the employer and the employee. These may bring about a desirable and acceptable distribution of wealth in the society.
      Otherwise, the bad practice of frequent change of governments will become a common trend with the people, no matter which country it is. Socially, criminal habits will see a rise along with crimes, and it will become easier to engage unemployed youths in political terrorism and related activities. It is a good sign that the developing world these days is becoming concerned about youth unemployment and is trying to solve the wealth distributional problem. But what is imperative is that each of these countries which are at such risks should try to solve its problem in its own way. That would be befitting and better.
       It is to be remembered that in a discussion of the creation of job opportunities in an economy with abundant youth or labour supply, many variables such as capital formation, technological progress, share of savings in national income, the real cost of capital created by inflation, inflation for the purpose of getting hold of resources, behaviours of the commodity market, capital formation vis-à-vis the growth of population, capital created by profits and credits, external and internal mass migration, movement of output per head in the economy, behaviour of domestic and foreign prices and wages, export and import of capital, standard of living, government taxation, efficiency of agricultural and non-agricultural production, the Law of Comparative Costs in the related countries, foreign trades etc turn out to be more or less interrelated and are to be taken into consideration.
The limited objective of bringing adequate attention of the international donors alone to the process of creation of sufficient youth job opportunities in developing countries is not enough. It is oversimplification of the problem.
        It requires to be kept in mind that through the creation of income generating activities in a youth labour/employee surplus economy the provision of giving the workers/employees a just and uniform wage rate and keeping prices at desired level demands urgency.  And thus bringing about parity in the standard of living of both the workers and the employers is necessary to appease the workers. What have to be given emphasis upon are piety, responsibility and accountability in the relevant economic dealings between the employers and the employees. Examining the influence of these variables on employment creation requires further investigations and researches. On this count, the model that needs to be developed for job creation for the youths may be different in different countries depending upon the individual characteristics of the economy concerned without giving in to the overall Western approach to the problem. We hope that some inquisitive experts will endeavour to make extended researches covering the relevant variables mentioned above to solve the global youth unemployment problem.
  The perspective of the youth and general unemployment in a deltaic country like Bangladesh has its own characteristics and peculiarities. A large number of Bangladeshis are homeless, landless and displaced. By being destitute and homeless because of natural calamities like cyclones, river bank erosions or manmade catastrophes like frequent political turmoil, these people throng the urban areas, especially the country's capital city of Dhaka. This results in the unbearably heavy pressure of the unemployed population on the urban areas on one hand and on the other, their life turns unimaginably miserable. The number of unemployed youths has been on a sharp increase since the country's independence in 1971. But this development has not attracted the positive attention of any government, though it is not impossible to solve the problem by taking appropriate and scientific measures.
The malady has to be solved because of the urgent need of converting the youth population of the country into a resourceful, productive force. We have failed to do this so far; rather by marginalising these people we have thrown them into a situation where they have to lead a substandard life. Thus we have forced a vast section of Bangladesh population, the youths, to become a burden for the nation rather than an asset. It is becoming obvious that the bomb of youth unemployment has already exploded in the country. Moreover, with the gradual increase in youth unemployment, new kinds of socio-political problems keep emerging --- especially in the urban areas. Those are mostly crime-related.
   It's time we devised practical and fruitful ways to enable our youths to become a lasting source of national strength.
The writer is a retired professor
of economics, BCS General Education Cadre. [email protected]