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The Impact of Education on Employment and the Unemployment
Situation
JOHN NIDJON ASSAN
May 26, 2012
It is a substantiated fact that the key to career
advancement and development is education and on the job
trainings and employment also greatly contributes to this
development. Education in general should model children
through kindergarten to higher education with all its
associated benefits including employment. In other words,
one will need to continue to learn and grow in order to
succeed through working.
Graduates are making sacrifices including a significant
investment of time and money as well as a dramatic lifestyle
change to achieve success throughout their life. They are
building their analytical, creative, and practical
intelligence which they need to cope with a world that is
changing in many ways. We all know as a fact that education
opens doors to brilliant career opportunities; it creates
better prospects in career and growth –financially,
emotionally, socially and intellectually. It enables the
progress of a nation and enriches society and family; it
facilitates advanced pragmatic thinking So, education
becomes an eligibility criterion for employment.
The theory of human capital is rooted in the field of
macroeconomic development theory (Schultz,1993). Becker’s
(1993) classic book, Human Capital: A Theoretical and
Empirical Analysis with special reference to education,
illustrates this domain. Becker argues that there are
different kinds of capitals that include schooling, a
computer training course, expenditures on medical care. And
in fact, lectures on the virtues of punctuality and honesty
are also additional capital.
According to the International labour organization (ILO),
the four elements of the Decent Work Agenda and their role
in alleviating poverty are:
Employment- the principal route out of poverty is productive
work.
Rights- without them, women and men will not be empowered to
escape poverty.
Protection- social protection and social values safeguard
against poverty.
Dialogue – the participation of employers and workers
organizations in shaping government policies for poverty
reduction is essential.
Let’s consider the following definitions for our
discussions, verifiable though.
The labour force is defined as the number of people employed
plus the number of unemployed but seeking work.
The employment rate is defined as the number of people
currently employed divided by the adult population (or by
the population of working age). This means self-employed
people are counted as employed. The unemployment level is
defined as the labour force minus the number of people
currently employed. The unemployment rate is defined as the
level of unemployment divided by the labour force.
Why do people seek for jobs at all ? Functional reasonable
human beings will think in this direction :
1.Earn money -the major reason why people work is to earn
money. Earnings are needed to buy foods, clothing, shelter,
family welfare and some major basic needs and necessities.
2.Personal development-many people have the drive to improve
themselves and working can provide an opportunity to learn
and grow, work can be a great teacher and a career
counselor.
3. Self expression-we all have interests, abilities,
talents, capabilities and so on, but work is one way which
we can express ourselves and bring to open what is within
us. It does not matter what kind of work you do so long as
it is not illegal and immoral.
4. Positive feeling-people get satisfaction from their work-
others work, may give them a sense of accomplishment and a
feeling of self worth among other things, make a person
complete. A sense of accomplishment is one of the greatest
rewards of working and a fulfillment in life.
5.Prestige - other people work because of prestige and the
social status they enjoy, the admiration from family and
society, the bond attached to them is gratifying.
Christopher Ernst and Janine Berg ILO explain that
employment, and the quality of employment, decent work, is
crucial for poverty reduction and in achieving growth with
equity and pro-poor growth. The link between employment,
economic growth and poverty reduction is thus a process in
which output growth includes an increase in production and
remunerating employment, which in turn, leads to an increase
in the incomes of the poor and reduction in poverty.
Furthermore, ensuring that growth is pro-poor requires high
employment-intensity of growth and a rise in productivity
which also depends on institutions, policies, laws and
practices that
positively affect the functioning of labour markets. A
functioning institutional environment can support the
virtuous circle and, in the process, facilitate pro-poor
growth.
Finally, informal employment remains important, persistent
and is often even rising. Thus, the quality of work of poor
people holding an informal job to be improved through the
rise in productivity through vocational training and
education, micro and small enterprise development and access
to credit. Moreover new strategies are needed to extend
social security to informal workers, and to improve their
working conditions. Formal job creation has to be
accelerated exceeding labour force growth. And the transfer
from informal to formal employment should be facilitated
through changes in regulations and tax on incentive systems,
as well as productivity of informal activities.
The discussion borders much on graduate unemployment, this
we take it to be tertiary education from the polytechnics
through first to second degrees and others within the
brackets. They are seriously looking for jobs to work.
Why are they not getting employment? And why are the
employers not employing them? So, where are the jobs? Whose
responsibility is it to create them and why are they not
creating them? These and other questions we must concertedly
and sustainably address.
Every employer of today requires his prospective employees
to be “well educated”, he requires expertise. But graduates
believe after graduation they will have the right skills and
attributes to make them employable. So, how can graduates
improve their employability? And employers also improve on
their intake and engagements of graduates.
Employers often desire a consistent core set of skills,
independent of degree subjects and institutions trained. The
core set includes interactive attributes, communication
skills, interpersonal skills and team working-together with
personal attributes. Personal attributes include intellect
and problem solving, analytic, critical and reflective
ability, willingness to learn, flexibility, adaptability and
risk taking. An understanding of the world and work culture
together with some others are also desirable attributes.
Educational results alone are not the only best measures of
employment, potential employers say and some graduates
admit.
The recent expansion of higher education especially the
private has resulted in the greater numbers of students
seeking for employment. Similarly the government, private
sector and others despite the rising numbers participating
in higher education and graduating, the numbers of jobs,
employment avenues have not increased. This implies that the
expansion in higher education, especially private, ie
supplying graduates is keeping pace with the growing demand
of the graduates seeking to work in non existent jobs
creating this foreseen unemployment problem. Government,
private sectors and others, where are the jobs?
Majority of the jobs are not advertised, don’t asked why
because it is about choice. Networking is all about building
healthy relationships. A lifestyle of connecting and helping
people in good and bad times will someday help you find the
right job. Others are afraid to be seen and called
opportunist, pushy, or self-serving. Tutors, advisors,
instructors classmate, career planning and placement
centers, networking skills, alumni, friends, family members
,administrators, employers and others can lead you through
to your professional or career development life.
Some workers who should have gone on compulsory retirement
till date are still loitering around because they used wrong
date of birth during their working days, others lobbied to
stay a while- are all still in the system pretending to be
working simply because retirement does not look promising at
all, but preparation to grave. Their children,
grandchildren, nephews and nieces are stranded and crying
unemployment, they also cry for this group, unemployment,
knowing or unaware that they are a part of the cause. One
solution is the system should flush out those over-aged out
for the productive age group to work. Proper Pension schemes
and other welfare packages and benefits be put in place and
this will in a short and long term handle some causes of
unemployment.
Unemployed graduates today, some few years ago, came from
all parts of the country to acquire their higher education
in the urban centers. Go and give back to others where you
came from especially the rural areas the training acquired
by volunteering and attaching with communities,
organizations, institutions and others to enhance your
resume/curriculum vitae and also expand your horizons, this
the employers want.
Higher Institutions should institutionalize students’
attachments and volunteering in the students communities’
and organizations in and around.
Active community involvement and an appreciation of
different cultures prepare you to understand complex
political, economic, and social forces that affect you and
others. This understanding is the basis for good citizenship
and encourages good attitudes. This also exposes you to know
the ways in which people and cultures are different and how
these differences affect world affairs. As a student likely
to encounter many cultures in the global labour market, this
knowledge will help you succeed. An employee who can work
with, adjust to, and respect people from different
backgrounds and cultures is valuable and the choice of every
employer.
Graduates who are lifelong learners (individuals who
continue to build knowledge and skills as a mechanism for
improving their lives and careers, indirectly building their
resume) will maintain the kind of flexibility that will
enable them to adapt to the demands of the global work
shortage. If you analyze what is happening, come up with
creative approaches for handling it, and make a practical
plan to put your ideas into motion, you can stay on track
toward your goals, or; you may decide to shift direction
toward a new goal that never occurred to you before the
change. Facing change means taking risks. Graduates don’t
contribute advertently or otherwise to any problem by
creating e.g centralized urban unemployment but solving it
with what psychologist Daniel Goleman calls Emotional and
Social Intelligence approach.
The impact of the degree subjects of study is important to
your employment prospects.
Graduates with teaching skills, nursing, accountants, civil
engineering, law, medical students’ agriculture and others
are likely to gain employment earlier than their
counterparts who studied other subjects. The latest fastest
way to get a job irrespective of the subject you read is to
become a political commentator or activist and invariably a
politician contributing in your own way.
The global economy is moving from a product and service base
to a knowledge and talent base and Ghana is not an
exception. Jobs of the past are being replaced by
knowledge-based, new ones seek critical, analytical and
practical employees. Employers employ workers who will think
critically and come up with solutions. The mismatch between
the skills and knowledge and other attributes of the labour
force and those demanded by employers’ causes structural
unemployment and must be corrected structurally by the
higher institutions and others anyway.
Few employers will like to train and retrain all employees
they employ at a given time, they will prefer an
alternative. If 10 employees undergo training lasting six
months, statistically it will be captured as 5 unemployed
and 5 employed, this is verifiable for edification and
accuracy.
Ghana is a signatory to the UN Millennium Development Goals
which also captures clearly the ILOs Decent Work Agenda,
which includes graduates from Ghana of course. How far have
we adhered to the following target?
The recognition that employment and decent work are the main
route for people to escape poverty led to the inclusion in
2005 of a new MDG Target (1.B) “achieving full and
productive employment and decent work for all, including
women and young people.” Within the UN system, the ILO takes
the lead in reporting on trends concerning the achievement
of this MDG Target.
The goal of Decent Work for All and the pledges in the
Millennium Declaration go hand in hand. The ILO’s Decent
Work Agenda, in a context of fair globalization, is
essential to the achievement of these shared aims.
All references are dully acknowledged.
Let’s keep the arguments rolling till we reach a solution to
the Unemployment situation, also have your say.
By: JOHN NIDJON ASSAN
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