Intro: The Graduate Diaries

As promised, I will start this by saying there's a blog called "Diary of a Jobless Graduate" yes- and the last article was posted two years ago. I reckon the JG (Jobless Graduate) became a WD (Working Graduate).

But- if you do not have a job when you are of working age- and condition there is a term for you, something like "UNEMPLOYED."

I was reading up on Unemployment and according to the Free Dictionary: Unemployment or joblessness occurs when people are without work and actively seeking work.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO) more than 197million people globally are out of work and 6% of the world workforce without a job as of 2012. That means 11,820,000 people all "unemployed." (Now I know why I was never good at Math- those are quite some zeros, and funny thing is they represent human beings and if it was 2012 between August and September then I was one of them!)

So,as I was doing some basic research on #The GraduateDiaries I got this book from the library, it was a report actually from the UN, with all these terms about employment. See, I thought that being unemployed just meant that you did not have a job but really needed one- but according to the report there are different kinds of unemployment.

See, just like people may have the same problem but the degree varies- well, guess the same applies to unemployment.

But first, according to Youth Banner 64% of the Kenyan population are the Kenyan Youth. In this case the youth range between 18yrs-35yrs. Some of the major causes according to Youth Banner of unemployment include:

• rural to urban migration (kila mtu kwenda Nai after form four na kufalashtuka!)
• school drop out cases
• high expectations from employers (yeah- an employer asking for 10 years experience and stating that the person should be between 24 and 35 years old)
• education system does not encourage people to have entrepreneurial minds (well, I beg to differ ask yourself how many people in Kenya are either studying Business Administration or IT- seems like everyone wants to make money by spending so much of it learning of how people made it instead of taking time to try and make it. FYI: I have very little qualms with the education system)

But who knew there would be types of unemployment?

I mean aren't the 11, 820,000 people still jobless?

So, thanks to ILO, UN, and Researchers the different type of unemployment are:

1. Cyclical or Keynesian: this occurs when there is not enough aggregate demand in the economy to provide jobs for everyone who wants to work.
2. Frictional (I love this one :-) : it means one is in between jobs (as in you are a job seeker)
3. Structural: this is where the labor market is unable to get everyone a job because of mismatch of skills and job requirements.
   

There are other types of unemployment like seasonal, hardcore, hidden (these are the ones researchers are not able to factor in during statistics or census or during data collection). But the greatest one that affects Sub-Saharan Africa is Number 3: Structural unemployment.

This is because Humanities and Social Sciences (my specialty) makes up 53% of the graduates- and this was between 2008 and 2010, by the end of 2012 this number had risen to 64%. (Courtesy of OECD- Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.)

Society is dynamic and now we are moving more towards technology and though there is still need for the Humanities, especially in addressing social challenges and issues, we need more hands-on, more tech-experience to create a balance.

In reading all this, one can only ask- what does this mean?

What impact does all this information have on my life and what if I am part of the 64% that's unemployed in Kenya- am I doing something wrong- if so what can I do to make things right? How can I?

Well, stick around- because part two is my favorite- it is about childhood dreams :-)

Image Ref: www.mid-day.com

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How can one change the world if one identifies oneself with everybody?