Apparently I am voluntarily unemployed!

I’ve just completed my Bcom Honours Degree in Economics and like most graduates I am job hunting. The question that I am always asked lately is why I’m not employed yet and why wasn’t I applying for any graduate programmes last year. Well the thing is, I was applying to so many graduate programmes and even got called for interviews; however I am still waiting for responses.

I understand that the job market in South Africa is kinder rigid as there are a lot of graduates (like me) who are looking for employment, hence the job market cannot swallow all of us. With an unemployment rate of 26.6% I am not surprised why I am still at home applying for jobs and hoping to get responses.  

I never thought I’d be frustrated about living in a third world country (because you cannot miss what you don’t know). However the thought of knowing that in some first world countries such as America, where their unemployment rate is 4.9% which is so close to full employment, I could be employed by now as almost everyone who is looking for employment is working.

This reminds me of a conversation I was having with a few friends of mine. My friend made a claim that “the classical school is misleading us, how could we live in a world that has full employment, and does this mean just because we are unemployed graduate then we are voluntarily unemployed!” So many of my friends agreed with him and they all said in a country like ours it was impossible to have full employment.

This is true! The classical school speaks about a market that is self-correcting, which has a natural state of full employment and no government intervention.  This is not the case for us in South Africa as we relay so much on the government for jobs as well as assisting the economy.

However my take on this is that we are voluntarily unemployed because we are not looking at other alternatives of earning a living. I mean if we did not all look at being formally employed but focused on other things such as starting businesses or freelancing or even trading, then the unemployment rate wouldn’t be so high.

Personally I would love to start my own thing and stand on my own; however my fear of failure is kind of holding me back. I do have capital to start and even an idea of the type of business I would like to start. However a part of me feels like I need some type of work experience before I could stand on my own so that I learn tried and tested methods of running a business. So maybe I am voluntarily unemployed because I chose fear to detect my current state.