By Edwin Oh Chun Kit
Youths are supposed to be future tech-savvy leaders, bringing nations forward. Yet in Malaysia, we have nearly half a million young people who are jobless or at least that is what the number tells us. This is the harsh reality we face. From an economic perspective, the national unemployment rates may seem deceptively low at 3.4% but digging beneath the surface would unearth a brewing crisis.
As of October 2023, over 310,000 young Malaysians, aged 15-24 are unemployed with that number soaring to nearly 440,000 when we consider a wider youth scope, aged 15- 30.1 While some see them as mere numbers, we see faces. Over 187,000 graduates with hard-earned certifications could not find a job in 2022, pointing to a deeper problem in the system, suggesting a structural mismatch. This issue is only expected to get worse with number of graduates steadily increasing over the years where 5.92 million graduated last year.2 Is the government implementing enough initiatives beyond job fairs to effectively address this issue?