Unemployment blues

These figures include any person who was engaged in an activity that brought income at the time of the survey, whether temporary or permanent, paid in cash or in kind, and young people aged around 15-years-old and above.

What is interesting about the findings, however, is that the job market continues to struggle to absorb graduates and approximately 17,000 of them are unemployed. This is a huge figure in view of the fact that almost the same number is expected to graduate this year from several tertiary institutions. This brings to front the question of whether we train our children according to what the market needs, or we just throw them into lecture rooms to pass time. Recently, the Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) engaged industry players to get information on what the market needs to inform the sponsor (government) on which programmes to send students to study.