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.
In a conversation with a friend, he said, "let corporate be a "fall back on"."
ReplyDeleteApparently corporate likes those who have "failed" at this business thing.
Good luck!
In a conversation with a friend, he said, "let corporate be a "fall back on"."
ReplyDeleteApparently corporate likes those who have "failed" at this business thing.
Good luck!
My ? is a you happy with yourself, to me it's sounds like your happiness is hold by job.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing what makes you happy not what you good at is what you must persuade.
Okunye is how you see life : to me ; varsity ,job family.but it's more than that.
Come into our economy it's funny we have best resource but yet we keep on being growing economy. While countries without resources continue being rich.
Mind set train that without big countries it won't work, now trump wants to impose to much tax on China.
Voluntarily unemployed not entirely.