I refer to "Are You Sure That Unemployment Rate So Low?" and "Employment Stats Are Out of Touch With Reality"
Every time when there is an Open House or Graduation Ceremony, universities and polytechnics would love to give timely press releases to say that most of their graduates are able to find jobs before graduation and their median salaries have risen, etc.
However, why is it that there is still so much netizens who react negatively and beg to differ in the comments section of SPH and Yahoo News?
One netizen commented, "I am shocked to find out that a graduate employment survey by MOE showed that people who graduated from my course in 2012 did well. They had a 74.8% graduate employment rate six months after graduation while having a median starting salary of $2700. However, I believe that this figure does not portray a true picture of the private sector.
According to my seniors, the survey is sent to alumni who are free to ignore the survey or take part. Since the unemployed or those taking temp jobs are usually ashamed like me, they would not bother to take part in the survey. There are many people working as admin staff & waiters to get by temporarily."
Most of us know that teenagers in their early twenties are more prone to anger. They only outgrow their anger when they are in their thirties. Therefore, I fear that if this unemployment goes uncheck in fresh graduates, there is a strong likelihood that there will be riots.
When a jobless youth cannot find work, he becomes more angry at the system and society. Since he has nothing to lose, all the more he becomes violent.
And if the Singaporean male has served his National Service, the higher chances of him reacting violently is imminent as he feels unfairness while females and foreigners are ahead in their careers.
If you have watched movies such as Taxi Driver and terrorists Timothy McVeigh, we have seen how ex-soldiers become violent when they fail to land good quality jobs.
In a study, pictures of fearful faces were shown to adults to see if they could correctly guess the emotion. When the adults looked at the pictures their brains fired in the prefrontal cortex—where humans process emotions.
However, when the same pictures to teenagers, they often mistakenly guessed that the fearful face was actually surprise or anger. Most interestingly, they actually used a different part of their brain to process the face. They used the amygdala which is where humans usually process their anger and fear.
What does this tell us? As adults we use the logical part of our brains in discussions or arguments, but teens use the area of our brain that processes gut reaction and emotions.
This is exactly why teenagers can be so quick to respond in anger.
In 2013, The rioting that has engulfed London and several other cities should have come as no surprise, given the huge numbers of unemployed and idle British youth.
Thus, there are at least 1 million jobless youths in Britain.
I urge Tan Chuan Jin, being an army general himself, knows how important to give priority jobs to unemployed male graduates in Singapore.
CJ
TRS Contributor