Young people are toting big phones but they can’t pay the bills

Youth unemployment: Stories behind the stats

Photo credits:Unsplash

There was a video doing rounds online recently. It featured three young ladies who ordered for an Uber but could not pay for the ride after they reached their destination . They seemed polished. In fact, they spoke in English and they were toting big phones.

I guess perhaps they were counting on someone — probably a colleague or a parent — to fix the bill but that person didn’t come through for them.

I didn’t like the way they went about it. They were entitled and rude. And they just made a spectacle out of the whole matter. But that’s beside the point.

Their story is a microcosm of the plight of a lot of young adults people who can’t fend for themselves. They are educated but they can’t find decent work for reasons beyond their control.

Young adults people are in a bad place. Only 19.1%of young people in sub-Saharan Africa received wages last year according to the World Bank.

There are alot of statistics alluding to the bleak state of youth unemployment — which can be a subject of a whole other blog.

I feel there is an insidious danger, however, that these stats may be taken as mere numbers that can just be memorised and documented in decorative reports. But the truth is that they are lived realities of millions of young people. There is a trail of pain and despair that the numbers don’t expressly tell and that which may be assumed.

It’s for that reason I thought of writing the stories behind these statistics:

There’s a 27 year old man who still pilfers coins from his mother’s purse because he can’t find a job.

A young journalist with a byline on a prolific national daily is overworked and is paid a bitsy US$ 35 a month. Despite the fame that comes with writing for a newspaper, he is crambling. But he knows he doesn’t have options. So he tarries.

A student quit persuing her career to go volunteer with an NGO because she simplify couldn’t get a place for industrial attachment. She is basically a drop out and she doesn’t have any hope of getting employed even by that NGO. Her classmate in the same plight opted to become a housewife.

A graduate could not secure a job after interning and volunteering for a big government agency. So he resigned to becoming a security guard, an opportunity he almost lost because he has a degree. He fears old classmates and friends bumping into him. He resents that he went to university but in the end he suffers like this.

A graduate secured a vacancy at a top corporate. She didn’t mind the little pay because she was in for exposure and networking. She left after several months with a colourful CV and important networks that would write recommendations for her.
She’s been applying for jobs. She has lost count of regret emails she has received. She has now taken up a side hustle that she thinks is not befitting her stature.

A young actor was turned down for 2 years. She started applying for all manner of jobs, cleaning, banking, teaching and whatnot despite her degree in performing arts. She hides every time visitors come to see her mum because she knows she should not be staying under her roof at this age.