Unemployment and Population or Why Can't I Get a Job

Julio F. Campos

Which careers will provide the best employability in the future? What should I choose to work with? What should I study? Those questions are getting more common on a daily basis as unemployment rates soar through every country in the world.

Although unemployment is an increasing concern amongst the overall population its causes are raising governments concerns worldwide due to its potential catastrophic social and economical consequences and the fact that no economical model seems to be able to handle the problem.

While many solutions are being proposed, from economic degrowth to less working hours, none have yet addressed the main problem behind the lack of available jobs. That problem lies at the population itself, or more precisely, the overpopulation problem.

Independently of its causes, intrinsic population growth in underdeveloped countries or increase migration to developed countries, the constant population growth results in an increasing demand for work which is simply larger than the available offer. Although at some overdeveloped countries there is a yet increase in demand for labor, specifically for low-income positions, even that demand will reach a limit.

However, it’s not only a job availability problem as the title, purposely misleading, suggests. At a lack of jobs situation jobless people start to direct their effort to the service sector, offering its work capability directly to the market or even searching for a new career. But as it can already be observed, even the services sector is already becoming saturated, and the thermometer is the constant lowering of services prices, which lead many to complain about the “prostitution” of their careers as more and more workers offer increasingly cheaper services as a, almost desperate, attempt to obtain some income.

The consequence for the person is ratter complicated. “Why can’t I get a job?” is a daily question asked. Many go to the route of increasing its qualifications, often counseled by human resources professionals or personal coaches. The problem is that thousands of other people do exactly the same. And no one is paying attention to the elephant in the room: “You can’t get a job because there are too much competition, too many people, and too few opportunities”. 

If some years ago the main issue was to get a proper qualification, competing with others for an opportunity at a college, which was for years as insurance for a job, today the competition moved to get the job or client. Plain simple math but drastically dramatic due to the amount of stress being put onto people that are, in most situations, trying to only get its most basic needs fulfilled.

For companies, the scenario seems appealing as it’s possible to replace expensive professionals by younger and cheaper ones. The caveat is that underpaid worker will keep stressed to either find a better job or due to its, so self-perceived, incapability to live at its best. The result is an inefficient productive system.

For governments that rely on economically active people to support its public social security system, the problem is reaching critical levels as those systems were designed upon the premise that elder people should be its major focus, being sustained by the richness generated by the economically active portion of the population. 

Now, with an increasing amount of this fraction of the population needing the aid of the system that they should be able to contribute to, those governments social system are facing an unsolvable economical deficit situation. Removing the government from the equation seems to provide a relief to public accounts, but at the cost of a dangerous increase in social restlessness as people become unable to provide even the most basic needs security to its families.

Unfortunately, the truth remains. There are no jobs because there are just too many people looking for jobs and no economic model until now can solve the problem.

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