Unemployment Issue Among The Fresh Graduates In The Pandemic Of Covid-19

As we all already knew, the world is now facing the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic situation. This pandemic situation is burdensome to the people worldwide, and Malaysia is not an exception. COVID-19 has created many impacts and lessons towards the world today. The issue that is going to be highlighted in this writing is one of the prominent impacts of Covid-19 pandemic, which is the increasing rate of unemployment among the fresh graduates.

The issue of the unemployment rate among the fresh graduates is soaring nowadays. Even before the pandemic situation happened, this was already a major problem in Malaysia, however the pandemic has worsened the situation. According to the Human Resources Minister, Datuk Seri M Saravanan, from the date of this first Movement Control Order that was implemented on 18 March 2020 until 27 November 2020, 99,696 Malaysians had lost their jobs. This pandemic situation caused an immense impact on Malaysians, especially the fresh graduates. It is a tough time for them to secure a job these days.

According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM), Malaysia’s unemployment rate has increased to 4.9% in January 2021 compared to 4.8% in December 2020. Even though it went up only 0.1%, but it has caused a huge impact on the unemployed. On the other hand, according to the Higher Education Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Noraini Ahmad, the unemployment rate among fresh graduates is expected to increase. Besides, 75,000 out of 300,000 graduates were expected to be unemployed due to the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. So, what should we do to ensure that this issue can be reduced during this pandemic?

This issue needs to be overcome by utilizing some alternatives that are given by our government. For instance, they can seek help from Malaysia’s PENJANA (Pelan Jana Semula Ekonomi Negara) stimulus package, which was introduced by our government during this pandemic. It is one of the initiatives by the government to restore the country’s economy. It helps the unemployed citizens to deal with the economic crisis and focuses on helping the unemployed among graduates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Other than that, the economic sector also can help to reduce the unemployment rate by reducing people’s working hours. It is known as short-time working, where the employees work fewer hours or are paid less than half a week’s pay. Even though the salaries are lesser than they should be, but at least they secure a job to get some resources to depend on. This method is being used in the United Kingdom, following the increase of unemployment in that country as well.

To conclude, being unemployed is not something that would be easy to face by some people. As graduates, some of them may have to pay off their debts during their studies or they live alone without a family to bear them. In this case, they have to rely on the income earned by themselves. As we can see, it is a very worrying issue today because it gives a bad impact on people's lives. Concerning this issue, the graduates must be employed to earn money to support their lives after graduation. If not, what else can help them survive?