Finding jobs for our unemployed

UNEMPLOYMENT is considered to be one of the prime social evils affecting our lives today.
Its economic impact is not as important as its social impact.
Most people in society today depend upon jobs to earn their living.
Therefore, any situation which negatively affects the jobs of people will affect the fabric of society as a whole.
And this is one issue that should be high on the agenda of the Government.
Bank of Papua New Guinea’s employment index shows that the level of employment in the formal private sector declined by 2.3 percent in the December quarter of 2017, compared to a decline of 1.4 per cent in the September quarter of 2017.
The level of employment fell by 2.2 per cent in the non-mineral sector.
By sector, employment decreased in the construction, mineral, wholesale, agriculture/forestry/fisheries, transportation and financial/business and other services, which more than offset increases in the manufacturing and retail sectors. By region, employment declined in the Highlands, Southern, Morobe and Islands regions, while it increased in the Momase and NCD regions.
In 2017, the total level of employment declined by 3.9 per cent, compared to a marginal increase of 0.3 per cent in 2016. In the non-mineral sector, it declined by 4.8 per cent in 2017.
And rightly so, employment is just following the trend set by the tight economic conditions, as stated by the Institute of National Affairs (INA) executive director and economist Paul Barker.
In PNG, the unemployment rate measures the number of people actively looking for a job as a percentage of the labour force.
According to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), unemployed people are those who report that they are without work, that they are available for work and that they have taken active steps to find work over a period of time.
When unemployment is high, some people become discouraged and stop looking for work; they are then excluded from the labour force. This implies that the unemployment rate may fall, or stop rising, even though there has been no underlying improvement in the labour market.
For PNG, the government can only help eradicate this epidemic through promoting investment in the private sector because jobs are created when there is investment in the country.
The focus on jobs is obviously vital. However, higher economic growth alone will not solve the jobs problem.
Jobs can be created when growth comes from the transition of labour from informal sectors like agriculture to the more formal manufacturing and service sectors. Such extensive growth, however, runs the risk of stagnation once the available stock of informal labour is exhausted – as some Southeast Asian countries found out the hard way in the late 1990s.
On the other hand, growth can come about without any substantial job-creation in the formal sectors of the economy, but through improvements in productivity.
They say opening up to genuine competition and private investment in various fields would increase opportunities, reliability and cut some costs.
To make PNG more competitive and attractive for investors (including smallholders) requires improving roads and other infrastructure and utilities, affordable telecommunications access, ports and shipping services, seriously addressing crime, corruption and excessive red-tape and public sector inefficiency and boosting literacy, numeracy and technical, vocational and professional training.
The government must address issues on law and order and social issues and make policies attractive to investors.
A more conservative point suggest that unemployment is like a necessary byproduct of the modern economic system.
And it must be managed within its current levels.
Failure to manage this unemployment creates problems.