"MANILA - SUTANTYO arrived at Jakarta's main Kampung Rambutan
bus terminal late last month along with hundreds of thousands of
people returning from the provinces after the Islamic holiday
marking the end of Ramadan.
The 20-year-old, high-school graduate from a small town in East
Java will be sent home if he is caught in police swoops on new
migrants who do not have permits to work in the capital.
'I can't find any work back home,' says Sutantyo, who hopes to find
a job as an office clerk or courier.
Sutantyo is a drop in a rising global wave of unemployed
youth.
According to a report last week by the International Labour
Organisation (ILO), the number of unemployed youth aged 15 to 24
rose worldwide by nearly 15 per cent to 85 million between 1995 and
2005.
South-east Asia, despite the vibrancy of many of its economies,
posted by far the highest rate of growth in its unemployed youth,
whose numbers surged 85 per cent to 9.7 million over the decade.
Sub-Saharan Africa was a distant second with a 34-per-cent
rise.
But the ILO uses wide brush strokes to portray youth unemployment
in a region with economies ranging from the wealthy, such as
Singapore, which was not mentioned in the study, to the
developing.
The Republic's overall unemployment rate fell to 2.7 per cent in
September from an average of 3.2 per cent last year on the back of
an economy that is ticking over nicely.
The ILO says the trend shows that South-east Asia's young labour
force has still not recovered from the fallout on general
unemployment caused by the 1997 financial crisis.
While Asia's economies are growing, job creation has not been
strong enough to absorb the tide of new entrants to the labour
force each year.
And countries with high birth rates, rigid labour laws and the
weakest economies bear the brunt of this trend.
Youth unemployment in South-east Asia is five times higher than
among adults, a ratio that is way above the global average. Close
to 16 per cent of the region's young labour force do not have jobs,
compared to 9.2 per cent in 1995.
'This is really the tip of the iceberg,' said Mr Steve Kapsos, a
labour economist in the ILO's Bangkok office.
'You have millions more who are working, but in such low
productivity jobs that they are not producing enough to exit
poverty, and that's the bigger problem in terms of numbers.'
In a fragile economy like the Philippines, where the ILO puts youth
unemployment at 25 per cent, even an empty parking space on a busy
street can be a source of income for the jobless young men who
usher drivers into a spot for a few pesos.
In Asia's strong economies, graduates from universities and diploma
mills are not only chasing too few jobs, but also finding it
increasingly hard to find jobs fitting their qualifications.
South Korea had a record 281,000 college graduates without jobs
this year, and its youth unemployment rate is nearly double
pre-1997 levels.
While that mainly reflects the preference of South Korean companies
to hire experienced workers rather than newcomers, Korean graduates
are also choosy - many hold out in the hope of landing a plum job
in one of the country's big-name conglomerates rather than joining
smaller firms for less pay.
Even so, the strains of failing to land a job can have appalling
consequences.
A year after graduating from Seoul's prestigious Yonsei University,
Ms Lee Jin Gyung attempted suicide by taking an overdose of
sleeping pills.
'I was so depressed after repeatedly failing to find a good job,'
said the 23-year-old arts graduate, who received only one job offer
after sending out more than 600 applications.
But she turned it down because it paid 1.3 million won (S$2,200) a
month, well below the average two-million won salary for a
white-collar worker in Seoul.
Over in Beijing, computer software graduate He Xin, 22, got his
degree from Beijing City University four months ago.
The only job offers he has received from IT companies have all been
in lower-rung sales and customer services. He was lucky even to get
those.
Just over four million graduates joined China's workforce this
year. But even with the economy growing at a double-digit gallop,
only 1.6 million have found jobs.
Only a generation ago, a college degree was a ticket to a job in a
state-owned enterprise offering free housing and medical
benefits.
In 1998, China increased university enrolment massively to delay a
feared wave of unemployment caused by the Asian financial
crisis.
In South Asia, youth unemployment rates have stayed at around 10
per cent over the past decade, but only one in 10 earns more than
the US$2 (S$3) a day measure of poverty.
Nash Yadav pulls a cycle rickshaw in Delhi for 13 hours a day. He
earns less than that but tries to send most of his pay to his
father, a subsistence farmer in Uttar Pradesh, to help settle a
family debt.
The 18-year-old complains that not much is left after the rent of
his rickshaw and other deductions, including 'bribes to keep the
police happy'.
Despite India's economic boom and the enormous wealth being created
in its IT and pharmaceutical sectors, long queues of unemployed are
still a common sight outside recruitment centres.
Unlike China, foreign investment in India's labour-intensive
manufacturing sector is sluggish, and there is a freeze on
government recruitment.
Investment is flocking to Vietnam as the world discovers its young,
industrious and cheap workforce.
While most of these jobs are in manufacturing, there are plenty of
opportunities for skilled profession workers. The local papers are
full of job advertisements looking for qualified people, especially
those with language skills.
Vietnamese Tran Thi Mong from Ho Chi Minh City landed a job in
public relations for a French company here just three months after
graduating from university this year.
'I studied French,' said the 22-year-old. 'My language skills help
me a lot in my work. I get US$300 a month for my trial time and
will get a higher salary when confirmed in my job.
'Still, I plan to check out other companies to see if I can get an
even higher-paying job."
So what is the future for Asia's young workers?
The ILO says those countries with declining young labour forces,
such as South Korea and Thailand, will be able to focus on
improving the quality of jobs, as well as widen opportunities for
young women in the workplace.
But a formidable youth employment challenge remains huge
elsewhere.
The ILO forecasts that between 2005 and 2015, the youth labour
force is expected to expand by 17 per cent in Malaysia and the
Philippines, and by more than 20 per cent in Laos and
Pakistan.
'These countries will face enormous pressure to create jobs for
millions of young labour market entrants over the coming decade,'
predicts the ILO."
(Straits Times 7 Nov)
