Kristen Gyles | What young people want most from the next government

I asked ChatGPT what young people in Jamaica want most from the next government. It couldn’t resist the usual urge to spit out a list of scholarly explained items, which I have shown below:

1) Reduction of crime and violence

2) Access to quality education

3) Economic opportunities and employment

4) Youth participation in governance

5) Child-centred policies

I wasn’t too sure about this list, so I asked three people in my network, all under 30 years old, if they thought ChatGPT was right. The only category out of the five they all agreed on was number three, and specifically, they all agreed that employment had to be an area of focus. There wasn’t agreement that crime and violence was something that the government could readily fix. There wasn’t agreement that there was anything wrong with Jamaica’s quality of education. There wasn’t agreement that youth care much about participation in governance and there wasn’t agreement that youth care much for a greater focus on child-centred policies.

There is something interesting about my little poll of three people. They are all employed. And, given that our unemployment rate sunk to a new record low of 3.5 per cent in October 2024, one couldn’t be blamed for asking why three employed Jamaican youth would say that the government needs to provide jobs when the unemployment rate has been sinking lower and lower for several quarters.

One doesn’t need to be speaking from a place of personal need or bias to say the government needs to improve the quantity and quality of jobs in the job market. One of my data subjects, who happened to graduate university more than two years ago said she sees herself as lucky because she has batchmates who have still not been able to find employment in their fields of study.

EMPLOYED YET MISERABLE

It becomes more and more apparent that many young people are employed, yet miserable. After spending upwards of a million dollars, which in many cases had to be borrowed, in order to complete a bachelor’s degree programme, many enter the workforce to do a job that did not require tertiary education. Unsurprisingly, they are paid at the level of an unskilled worker because, well, they are doing the work of an unskilled worker.

It is demoralising to young people to watch their lives waste away doing nothing of value when they know that they can offer the world so much more than answering a new caller every two minutes to repeat a scripted greeting. Every job has its place in our economic ecosystem, but not every job requires a three or four year tertiary degree. The quantity of jobs available for high school graduates appears to exceed the number of high school graduates seeking work. At the same time, the quantity of jobs available for university graduates falls woefully short of the number of university graduates seeking work. Because of this misalignment, many university graduates are paired with jobs that would be more suitable for someone with a high school diploma.

Interestingly, when asked the question, one person immediately made it clear that ‘quality education’ is not doing anything for anyone. Her reasoning was that employment is predicated on networking and ‘links’, so why the big ado about education? This is definitely not an unpopular sentiment. It is why there has been a growth in social media jobs and other unconventional career fields that have no educational requirements. It is also why there has been a growth in scamming and illegal, but lucrative activities. If people see themselves as being worse off when they engage in legitimate work, then what incentive is there to work legitimately? Are we just relying on people’s sound morals and kind consciences to keep playing the job market game?

IMPORTANCE OF NOVEL AREAS

Whoever forms the next government will have to recognise that simply speaking about the importance of computer science, artificial intelligence, robotics and all the new and emerging novel areas will not be enough. These are areas where academia does nothing to inspire interest in the upcoming crop of young people when they are seeing their friends and relatives graduate from these degree programmes. They only spend the first year of their ‘working life’ job-hunting as their full-time job.

At face value, it seems a good starting point is more robust labour market analysis. Each quarter there is a recital of the declining unemployment rate but there seems to be a consistent denial of the challenges that young graduates face when seeking work. Young people want to know that their government understands the realities of economic life in 2025.

Beyond that, the new government has to focus on restoring some feeling of meritocracy across the job market. It is sad that so many young people, educated and uneducated alike, have concluded that education serves no purpose. But, realistically, one can hardly be expected to think any differently if after marching to collect their degree, they walk off the graduation stage right into a hard life of poverty, while less qualified persons are somehow able to access meaningful employment.

Rather than incentivising the growth of low productivity sectors that pay little and that increase the glut in the market of low-skill jobs, the government should focus on increasing growth in other areas. So, the homework question for each political party seeking ascension to the government bench is how can we incentivise the creation of another Petrojam, Digicel, FLOW, GraceKennedy, Lasco, CariMed, and maybe even a Ford, a Pfizer and a Microsoft? There should be more of a focus on building out these industries and amending laws to allow for freer entrance into these sectors so that Jamaicans can one day enjoy not only lower service costs but a greater variety of high-quality jobs.

Kristen Gyles is a free-thinking public affairs opinionator. Send feedback to kristengyles@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com