Unemployment its Solution and Role of Youth.

By Sadiya Ashfaq Khan.

Unemployment is a situation when a person actively searches for a job and is unable to find work. Unemployment indicates the health of the economy.

The unemployment rate is the most frequent measure of unemployment. The unemployment rate is the number of people unemployed divided by the working population or people working under labour force.

Unemployment means a person willing to work but unable to find a qualified job. Our country is facing many problems but one of the serious problem is of unemployment. Many graduates, doctors, engineers, scientist are unemployed or working underemployed. Due to unemployment we are wasting our country’s human resource.

The unemployment in India stood at 6.1% in the financial year 2018 mentions the NSSO – National Sample Survey Organisation Report 2019.

In India, there are several types of unemployment. The types of unemployment are discussed below:

Disguised Unemployment: This is a type of unemployment where people employed are more than actually needed. Disguised unemployment is generally traced in unorganised sectors or the agricultural sectors.
Structural Unemployment: This unemployment arises when there is a mismatch between the worker’s skills and availability of jobs in the market. Many people in India do not get job matching to their skills or due to lack of required skills they do not get jobs and because of poor education level, it becomes important to provide them related training.
Seasonal Unemployment: That situation of unemployment when people do not have work during certain seasons of the year such as labourers in India rarely have occupation throughout the year.
Vulnerable Unemployment: People are deemed unemployed under this unemployment. People are employed but informally i.e. without proper job contracts and thus records of their work are never maintained. It is one of the main types of unemployment in India.
Technological Unemployment: the situation when people lose their jobs due to advancement in technologies. In 2016, the data of the World Bank predicted that the proportion of jobs threatened by automation in India is 69% year-on-year.
Cyclical Unemployment: unemployment caused due to the business cycle, where the number of unemployed heads rises during recessions and declines with the growth of the economy. Cyclical unemployment figures in India are negligible.
Frictional Unemployment: this is a situation when people are unemployed for a short span of time while searching for a new job or switching between jobs. Frictional Unemployment also called Search Unemployment, is the time lag between the jobs. Frictional unemployment is considered as voluntary unemployment because the reason for unemployment is not a shortage of jobs, but in fact, the workers themselves quit their jobs in search of better opportunities.

The unemployment in any nation have the following effects on the economy:

The problem of unemployment gives rise to the problem of poverty.
The government suffers extra borrowing burden because unemployment causes a decrease in the production and less consumption of goods and services by the people.
Unemployed persons can easily be enticed by antisocial elements. This makes them lose faith in the democratic values of the country.
People unemployed for a long time may indulge in illegal and wrong activities for earning money which increases crime in the country.
Unemployment affects the economy of the country as the workforce that could have been gainfully employed to generate resources actually gets dependent on the remaining working population, thus escalating socio-economic costs for the state. For instance, a 1 % increase in unemployment reduces the GDP by 2 %.
It is often seen that unemployed people end up getting addicted to drugs and alcohol or attempts suicide, leading to losses to the human resources of the country.

Youths role to end unemployment

Throughout history, young people have been disproportionately responsible for advances in every field. Yet, we consistently underestimate their ability. Einstein was 26 when he published his work on photo electricity and relativity for which he is celebrated. A large percentage of Nobel prizes, Fields Medals, Turing Awards have recognized work done before the person turned 30.

Many of the greatest entrepreneurs and inventors—including Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk—were youngsters when they started their enterprises. So too were great warriors like Alexander, Ashoka, Babur and Saladin and revolutionaries like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.

The reason for this is simple. The ability to dream the impossible, to think laterally, ambition and risk appetite are correlated with youth prompting Steve Jobs to give his famous advice “Stay young, stay foolish!”

Creating an environment where people, young and old, feel encouraged to tinker, invent or solve problems has huge consequences. In his book Mass Flourishing, Nobel prize-winning economist Ned Phelps looked at how Britain and America became prosperous.

“Most innovation in 18-19th century Britain and 19-20th century America wasn’t driven by a few isolated visionaries like Henry Ford or Steve Jobs; rather, it was driven by millions of ordinary people who felt empowered to use their minds, to seize an opportunity, to solve a problem, and think of a new way or build a new thing. As more and more people started tinkering with new ideas and new ways of solving problems, a spontaneous combustion happened resulting in the economies taking off,” he wrote.

We live in a time of pervasive connectivity when individuals can tackle big problems. There are many inspiring stories of young people in India, often of modest means and little formal education, doing extraordinary things.

Today the young are editing genes, building custom robots and drone applications, turning waste into useful products, creating local apps to solve community problems, building low-cost solutions to water, sanitation, irrigation. But we need a hundred or thousandfold increase in the number of such change makers. Our challenge then is to create a global movement of a billion such change makers. So tinkering, invention, problem-solving, entrepreneurship and leading change must be emphasized—and not just acquiring vocational skills and landing a job. This will inevitably result in more economic dynamism, more entrepreneurship and more jobs.

CSadiya Ashfaq Khan is a student of Masters in Library Sciences
University of Jammu