A Gap between Education and Employment Opportunities
The Accounting Chamber of Ukraine made public some curious information recently. Audits showed that if young specialists were to be viewed as a commodity, not a production factor, this would indicate a deep crisis on the nation’s employment market. It turned out the state does not analyze employment demand, while higher educational institutions train specialists who graduate only to fill the ranks of the degree-holding unemployed. Paradoxical as it is at first glance, it is about professions that are in great societal demand, such as economists (in a broad sense), engineers and lawyers.
The Accounting Chamber illustrates this with the example of Donetsk oblast, by no means the most unemployment-stricken region, where colleges and universities graduated 17,563 “economists, traders, and entrepreneurs” last year. Out of these, only 2,954 (16.8%) were offered jobs and “a small part found employment on their own.” What worries the Accounting Chamber in this case is that 4,892 graduates (27.8%) received knowledge at state budget expense. In other words, the issue is not only about the absence of a much-needed link between the markets for education and labor. The issue is about ineffective utilization of budget funds by “some educational institutions.”
As The Day’s correspondent was told at the State Employment Center (organizations of this type registered 2.8 million Ukrainian citizens last year), the professions of metal worker, construction worker, installation worker, etc., are in demand, while lawyers and economists are often unable to get a job. But, for quite obvious reasons, builders prefer to lay bricks in Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia, Germany, and Portugal, for they refuse to work for nothing. Still, they are the older generation. Job center employees say today’s young people are hard to please. In Kyiv, Ukraine’s most “employment-friendly” city, very few will agree to work for less than $200-300 a month. In the provinces, the target figure drops to $100-150. And this, frankly speaking, is normal.
What is not normal is the low salaries of Ukraine’s civil servants. Presidential advisor Ella Libanova is right in this respect, “It would be not bad to introduce a job service for those who study at state expense. It is wrong when an individual who received a higher pedagogical education goes then to work in some company as secretary.” But how can this be done if fewer and fewer young people try to work in the public sector in general and in schools in particular?
There is also another side of the problem. Nobody is so far able to gauge the true level of employment in Ukraine. According to the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies, there were about 5.6 million jobless in this country last year. And how many worked part-time, were laid off or just had their wages delayed (that is, did not work)? It is not clear then how to assess this country’s real demand for specialists. How can a link be established between the labor and education markets?
All the young person can do today is rely on him/herself. Ukraine has passed the time of paternalism, and, by all accounts, those times will not come back very soon on a qualitatively new basis of social guarantees. It is very important for one to know the relationship of supply and demand for certain specialties. There are not so many highly skilled professionals for one to assert that the labor market is brimming over. In any case, most executives from various walks of life mention the lack of people to what has to be done as their major problem.
