“A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune’s inequality exhibits under the sun.” “You take my life when you take the means whereby I live.” These observations by Thomas Carlyle and William Shakespeare respectively reflect what youth unemployment means to me. As I reflect on youth unemployment, several thoughts and examples cross my mind. Here are a few: Almost every week one reads in newspapers in India, my country, about farmers committing suicide due to a high level of indebtedness on the one hand and lack of farm unemployment on the other. Many are in their youth. There was a very touching story about a young man who lost his job due to the global meltdown. He did not have the heart to tell his family, friends or neighbors about the sad development. He would therefore, leave his home everyday at the normal time in the morning with his brief case, spend the day in a garden and return in the evening. There is an increasing number of young patients visiting psychiatrists for clinical depression caused by unemployment. In recent times, many college graduates have volunteered to work absolutely free in private companies. Their objective, in the absence of a paying job, is to get some experience and add to their resumes so that when the opportunities of paying jobs arise, they have a better chance than others.
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Youth unemployment is an area of very serious concern to South Asia, India (which is the largest country in South Asia) and to me and my generation. The impact of unemployment among the young is described here in the first part of this essay. GDP Impact: It is an established economic reality that the size of the workforce directly impacts a country’s GDP. Not only does the work force produce manufactured goods or services or agricultural produce in direct proportion, but also brings in its wake increasing purchasing power, which in turn, fuels economic growth. Thus unemployment