Graduated with problems ?

I met and talked to a group of young men in a cafe today. All four of them are well dressed with branded T-shirts, branded jeans, expensive shoes, etc. They spoke reasonably good English. All of them carried the latest PDA phones with wireless Internet access. I guess they are technologically savvy and well connected via mobile phones and Internet. But, I also found out all of them are unemployed graduates. Believe it or not, they blamed the government for not sensitive to their plights, and they also blamed the private sectors for not giving them the opportunity to showcase their talents. I suggest to them to take the road less travelled, instead of becoming a job taker, why not becoming a job creator. In another word, start a small business on their own. Guess what ? they told me the government must first make available easy loan or grant for them to take the risks. These jokers are hopelessly parasitic. I shake my head.....

Times has changed. For the better or worst, I don't know. In the past, with a university degree, you probably have no problem securing a decent job and with higher than average salary. But nowadays, you look out into the street, probably most of the young men and women out there are college or university graduates. Sadly, most of them are either unemployed or are engaged in jobs that does not match their skills and qualifications. Yes, times has changed, a university degree does not guaranteed you anything, it basically allowed you to roll your paper qualification into cone shape to frustratingly scope for the end of the unemployment line.

It is frustrating for those unemployed graduates to actively seek employment but end up continuously receiving rejections. However, the problem of unemployed graduates is a universal problem. It is not a problem restricted to Malaysia only. In Malaysia, we probably have, may be 80,000 unemployed graduates at any one time. ( I am not sure I got the figure correct, I remember I read it somewhere) But in China, they have a big and constant migraine of dealing with 5 million graduates EVERY YEAR streaming into the employment market. Compare this astronomical figures with our Malaysia's cumulative 80,000, Malaysians are indeed very lucky to only have such a small numbers of unemployed graduates.

Malaysian graduates have been having so much good times during their education process that, they are ill prepared for hard times. Ask any unemployed graduate what they are doing now, you would probably receive the standard answer of "tunggu kerja". Which literary means "waiting for a job to come by". Perhaps their mindsets are already stereotyped and they are not trained to venture out from their comfort zones to accept and embrace new realities. Some Malaysians felt so distress that some of our Malaysian graduates have to resort to become TAXI driver to earn a living. By the way, what is wrong being a Taxi driver ?

I recently read a news article in China highlighting the Chinese graduates, having trouble getting a job in the fields they studied in, resorted to look for jobs in non related areas including BATH HOUSES as masseurs due to its grim employment situation. These unemployed graduates have no problem massaging feet and rubbing the back of customers. I do admire these Chinese graduates for the matter of fact and down to earth adaptation and survival skills. In any country you go, there are always mismatch of skills and demands. Existing skills need to be modified to meet demands. How on earth are we going to create new demands to satisfy existing skills that are no longer relevant ?

I guess some of our unemployed graduates have to shed their egoistic elitist attitude and intellectual pride. They have to adapt to changing economic situation and embrace the reality of the possibility of working in non related fields to acquire new skills, and with lesser pay. They need to adopt a more practical approach rather than having the dependence mentality of unfairly blaming the government or private sectors for not creating the right jobs for them. The government has already done more than enough to put them through free or subsidized education from primary, secondary, college, and university.

I still find it difficult to comprehend that, currently, foreign and Malaysian businesses still have to resort to recruit thousands of foreign workers from Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Burma, India, etc. to fill the job vacancies. In another word, we have thousands of job vacancies in Malaysia, but there are not enough Malaysians willing to take up these jobs. Or perhaps, these companies are not willing to hire Malaysian workers because of mismatch of expectations and attitudes. Can't our unemployed graduates lower a bit of their expectations to fill up these vacancies ? Just a trivial thought, no offense intended.

Every job is a honorable job as long as it is within the ethical domain of right livelihood and right living. So, don't worry, it doesn't matter what job you start your career with, you may start with lesser pay or lesser job satisfactions, but eventually, things will work out. It always will. Remember, to be successful, you need to start from somewhere........

To side track a bit, I have the an opportunity to talk to one typical unemployed "fresh" graduate sometimes ago. What he told me is naively quite interesting. According to him " Sir, I have calculated and I must have a minimum monthly salary of RM 2,500. Anything less than that, I can not survive..." In a way, taking into consideration of the costs of living in Malaysia, he is quite legitimate to stake that demand. I can understand his frustrations of not able to secure a job after more than 2 years of actively putting himself in the employment market. But, in this case, the best I can do is, to wish him good luck in his search for employment.

I sincerely think the problem of unemployed graduates is a self inflicted perceptional problem in Malaysia. Realistically, Malaysia still have a lot of unfilled vacancies, but the graduates are not willing to take up the jobs because these jobs did not met their expectations. The market should be allowed to correct itself without interference from regulatory agencies. Everything else being equal, the employment market will find its economic equilibrium at the appropriate times. Therefore, there is no need to waste scarce economic resources to implement short term political solution to appease these unemployable intellectuals. The bottomline is, the tax payers does not owed them a living.

The economic wellbeing of a country depends on its competitiveness for future survival. What is needed most is, the government need to have greater political will to focus its attention to make Malaysia competitive by reducing the costs of livings, reducing the cost of doing businesses, improve transparencies, streamline regulatory processes and administrative procedures, reducing economic wastages, and eliminate misallocation of economic resources. Why wasting resources and bother so much with this self inflicted perceptional problems of unemployed graduates ?

( Note : Sincerely, no insensitivity is intended by this posting to any group of people. And, hopefully, today is not a day of any religious significant that may rendered this posting to be religiously offensive and insensitive. If you felt offended by this posting, please take your nasi lemak's apology and grievance seeking elsewhere !!! )