Access to youth employment

Since being a small girls and boys, we have been told to get a good education for the better job and great future. However, number of the graduate unemployed people can approve that education is not enough to prepare young generation to better future. There are many people whose university degree has become piece of paper around us. For example, according to the Labor Ministry of Mongolia, around 64 % of graduates could find jobs and rest of them are sent to unemployed group each year. In most cases the students do not attempt to think out of the box as they are not equipped with the necessary skills. In addition, in many countries, especially in developing and least developed countries, the formal education system is obsolete. Of course, there are various reasons of youth unemployment depending on each countries character or depending on individuals; including lack of professional experience, mismatch between the skills that young people have and the positions that are offered on the job market, lack of access to capital and financial crisis. Here I would like to concentrate more on lack of necessary skills among educated youth than any other reasons; comparing with my country, Mongolia.

Youth unemployment is a current worldwide big challenge due to its great number of unemployed people. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that the global youth unemployment rate is expected to reach 13.1 percent, reaching 71 million, in 2016. Of greater concern is the share and number of young people, often in emerging and developing countries, who live in extreme or moderate poverty despite having a job. In fact, 156 million or 37.7 per cent of working youth are in extreme or moderate poverty (compared to 26 per cent of working adults).
Youth unemployment rate in Mongolia is close to world average youth unemployment rate, sharing 15.1 % according to World Bank, Youth Unemployment Rate for Mongolia, 2016. 67 % of all unemployed people is youth in Mongolia. In most of the countries today the education system is geared to enabling the youth to pass out with their qualifications based on academic knowledge and prepare for seeking a job. There is little or no focus on building and equipping the students with leadership, building awareness and giving them training for entrepreneurship. For Mongolian case, among the required skills, language skill and team work skill were named as most common barriers by the unemployed Mongolian youth. (Graduate employment research, 2015).
In the near future maybe the number will be more critical. The world is changing so fast. It requires more and more digital literate people. First came steam and water power /Industrial 1.0/; then electricity and assembly lines /Industrial 2.0/; then computerization /Industrial 3.0/ and now Industrial 4.0 with digital era. According to a book entitled The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, he describes how this fourth revolution is fundamentally different from the previous three and different skill set will be required. In this fourth revolution, we are facing a range of new technologies that combine the physical, digital and biological worlds. These new technologies will impact all disciplines, economies and industries, and even challenge our ideas about what it means to be human. Technologies such as big data, advanced analytics, the internet of things, wearables, advanced robotics, learning machines and 3D printing are finding their way into factories. This mass automation means unemployment or more requirement on digital and technology at any profession area.

The Gartner consulting firm (which forecast one-third of jobs will be automated by 2025) also warns of the consequences for society: “As the digital revolution kills jobs, social unrest will rise” (Computerworld, Oct 7, 2013) . From Jeremy Rifkin in the End of Work (1995) to Martin Ford in the Rise of the Robots (2015), economists have been predicting that automation will make human jobs obsolete in the not-too-distant future. But who are the first cycle mass losers due to automated jobs? There is no doubt that Industry 4.0 will fundamentally change the nature of manufacturing jobs which provide job opportunities for people from many developing countries.
The rate of youth unemployment is high enough now. But the number might become more critical in the future due to the fast growing technological requirement at professional level and mass unemployment at factories due to automation. The providing access to necessary skills during the study is tremendously important. It seems a safe bet to say, then, that our current political, business, and social structures may not be ready or capable of absorbing all the changes a fourth industrial revolution would bring, and that major changes to the very structure of our society may be inevitable. Thus enriching the education system can contribute to more skilled graduates.
Everything is now about preparing technological skilled and knowledge workers in each sector. Even plumbers now started to be required to be, at least, application using knowledge to find nearby customers or post about his availability. The governments and education sectors should take aware of change of the future and prepare its future generation, by changing its obsolete education system especially in developing or least developed countries. Industrial 4.0 maybe be the next round of the game or the chance to define who will be winners and who will be losers for the next several decades. Even it is predicted to bring mass unemployment, which country will make effort or invest to be digital literate they will win in this competition. The nations who can prepare its future generation as digital literate have a great chance to develop, decrease youth unemployment and gain more from the digital era.

Resources:
1. World Bank, Youth Unemployment Rate, 2016.
2. Graduate employment research, the Ministry of Labor, Mongolia, 2015
3. What Drucker knew about 2020, Harvard Business Review, Rick Wartzman, 2014
4. The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era by Jeremy Rifkin,1995
5. “The Future of Jobs Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution”, World Economic Forum, Global Challenge Insight Report, 2016
6. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB5070/index1.html