How Vocational Training Is a Solution to Unemployment for Youths

Unemployment refers to a situation where there are no jobs available for the labour force. In Nigeria today, it is a common sight to find university graduates who have graduated from a school for five years or more without jobs. The unanswered question on the lips of Nigerians is what is responsible for the high level of unemployment in society when we have abundant natural resources?

The Causes of Unemployment in Our Society

Unemployment in our society is caused by certain factors. The factors are a high population of graduates, migration, and lack of new establishments/organizations. The factors have been discussed below.

1. High population of graduates

It is longer news that tertiary institutions such as universities, polytechnics, colleges and so on are producing a large number of graduates every year. The companies and organizations they are supposed to work for are not put in place. This means that as the graduates are accumulating year in and year out, they are jobless. And all their efforts to make something done so that they can get a daily living prove abortive because there is no capital.

2. Migration

Another factor why there is unemployment in the countries is migration. Many people in the rural areas and farmers in the villages have left their places for cities. They move to urban areas because they believe that things can get better in the cities since they tried their best and nothing has been put in place. When getting to the urban areas, they will still join those who hustle for the job for a very long time. Regrettably, they will realize that staying in the villages and urban areas is even better than coming to the cities.

3. No new establishment of businesses

In the old days, jobs wait for graduates because the companies are more than the graduates. Governments at all levels take the welfare of the graduates seriously. They care about them and they also influence investors to establish companies and businesses in which the jobseekers can work.

Evil Effects of Unemployment

Unemployment has caused many things which affect the economy, individuals and society at large. Some of the evils that unemployment has caused are as follows.

1. Unemployed people are prone to chronic diseases

Many people are suffering from health problems such as hypertension, diabetes, depression, distress, cardiovascular disease; sleeplessness, etc. area result of order the al in unemployment. Such illnesses occur when the unemployed have been frustrated and depressed. They will end up with illnesses or sicknesses which can result in untimely death if care is not taken.

2. Unemployment tells on the family

The parents anticipate that when their child completes his or her education, he or she can make a return to the family from his or her job. On the contrary, it does not work that way this way. It is unfortunate that many graduates still depend on their parents for daily living. The bad situation has caused marital problems too. The husband can hardly feed his family just because he does not have a job.

3. Unemployment widens poverty

Poverty is spread every day in the world because there is constant unemployment in our society. It is no longer news that millions of people in our society are jobless. Many are underemployed while many are doing jobs they don’t want to do. It is hard for many people to take three square meals a day.

A Suggested Solution to Unemployment

Vocation can be a solution for unemployment after many ideas have been tried without any solution. Training in different vocations is very important in various areas. Up to 6 ways can be adopted to solve the problem of unemployment. They are discussed below.

1. Restructure of Nigerian Educational Curriculum

The answer to this all-important question is to engage in vocational training. Vocational training refers to a particular training on skills, trade or occupation. It is high time our Nigerian Educational Curriculum underwent restructuring to inculcate a series of skills in our youths.

These skills or trades include hairdressing, photography, dry cleaning, tailoring, welding, etc. Training in different vocations is the only remedy to the problem of unemployment since there are no white-collar jobs for teaming youths.

2. Government should provide vocational facilities

The government on its part should encourage the youths by providing facilities to fully enhance the implementation of these programmes. For instance, a youth who has undergone training in the area of photography should be assisted with some soft loans or grants to procure some of the cameras needed for the actualization of his training.

This will enable the person to embark on large-scale production and can even employ other youths. As a result of this, there will be less pressure on the government and will enable it to divert attention to the provision of basic infrastructure such as water, electricity and roads.

3. Standard of living should be improved.

Furthermore, through vocational training of our youths, there will be an improvement in the standard of living. This is true because as many youths are engaged in productive ventures, the profits they run out of will be used to provide for their basic needs as well as that of their siblings and parents.

There should be a need for well-spirited individuals and government to set up assorted training centres in the states, local government and even in schools.

The curriculum planners should design the syllabus for such persons to fully explore their psychomotor domain. Again, within the school setting students who have a deficiency in cognitive development should be advised to switch to vocational centres where most of the job will be done with their hands instead of reading information.

4. Science and technology are other channels.

Science and technology are one of the ways that help to solve unemployment. The rate of unemployment is high in our society simply because many graduates of science are either under-utilised or unemployed. This is so because there is no scientific and technological development to match the number of graduates churned out of our universities every year.

Conclusion

From all indications, the level of unemployment in this country requires no other solution than to encourage youths who are most affected to embrace vocational training.