14 Feb 20191 Jul 2019 by sheilasingapore

When The Economy Speaks … Reversing National Unemployment Statistics

Published Articles, Strategy Development, Systemic Stories of our Economic Realities
Agriculture, Business and Economy, Economic growth, economy, industry value chains, job creation, manufacturing, persistent unemployment, Tertiary Industries, unemployment
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6 Things For A National Leader To Do

https://medium.com/series/when-the-economy-speaks-cdb62e49ad36

Peter looks down at his high school examination results transcript for the first time. It is not a pretty picture. He had been praying hard the results that would peer back at him would be different but he also knew deep down that it may not. He had been dreading this moment. It has arrived.

Still, he had wished for otherwise. He is a bright student. But it had not been an easy past few years. He had just lost his older sibling to a debilitating illness. They had been very close to each other. He is also dauntingly aware his parents are not close to each other and fears they may find other partners and break-up. What would that mean as a family? Where would he seek his counsel? Will he be intruding? That bothers him.

Turning his eyes back at the results, he knows he can do much better than what he sees. The reality is dawning at him. He is facing it squarely. These results are not going to help him get into his dream course at the university of his choice. It hurts him. What should he do now?

Suddenly he is remembering that he has to announce these results to his family. He has been known to be the one with a sound head on his shoulders. But now. With this. What would they think of him? Maybe they would not ask. He consoles himself.

But they did. He chose to keep quiet. Perhaps they will understand. He hopes. But meanwhile, he needs to come up with a strategy. Fast. So that his peers do not leave him behind.

He thinks.

He needs to get grades. Good grades. Fast. What subjects will help him do so? French. Perhaps. Grades that would help him put his foot through the door of a tertiary institution. What can he do so that he can catch up with his peers in the shortest possible time? He has the coming summer months to do so.

What jobs are out there that he should prepare for? He really did like the sounds of the field of nautical engineering. He had really enjoyed seeing and fiddling in the cockpit of a cruise ship during one of his summer vacations. It had made him feel happy and come alive. And he loves his Maths and Physics. But he has been told that manufacturing here is not a big deal in terms of jobs. What should he do? How should he decide?

Are his days of plain-sailing through life over? Will he face the same dilemmas when he out there in the big wide world looking for a job? With only four jobs available for every ten working age population, what will become of his chances with not so great grades? Supply of labour is now outstripping the demand for labour. Will jobs become too slim for his picking?

He will need to figure this out. He needs time. But does he have the time?

We all know a story like this.

One way or another.

And so. Here is the situation. You are now charged as the Head of this State. What would you do to turn around the situation?

Run, you say? Oh, you did not say that. Good! Invite more investors, locals as well as foreigners, to invest in the country?

Your predecessors have done that. Poured trillions for decades over with the help of past heads of states and a cabinet of citizen representatives. Yet, widespread unemployment today, has grown to now prevail at 60%! How did that happen?

You say perhaps “they” have not done enough. That you will do more than them. That is possible. For how long would you do more of the same? What went wrong? What else could we do?

Some measures are drastic and feels more like a bitter pill to swallow. But I hope it will make the tough actions we would need to take instead become easier to bear with. So here goes.

1. “EXPORT” UNEMPLOYMENT

Don’t have an agricultural and manufacturing bases? It has been too hard to build them? Well, no worries. Export unemployment at the same rate that we have been importing manufactured goods and the raw materials that were produced so that the unemployed follow the money you have spent buying them from outside the county (or the region).

2 “MATCH” BIRTHS TODAY TO JOB CREATION TOMORROW

If you know we will make more jobs tomorrow, go forth and multiply. But if you know, that we will not, … well, you get the drift.

A runaway population just means runaway unemployment figures that becomes hard to manage.

Supply of labour does not come from our education “system”. It is as the result of rates of births, not today, not just last year but from twenty years back. This is the time it takes for a young person to mature and readies himself for the job market.

Of course, it becomes tricky matching what happens in the bedroom today to the decisions we make in the boardroom twenty years on. The only consolation we can make is, the one who “creates” the child is the same one who plans today to “create” those jobs tomorrow. Well, no, I was not talking about God.

It is you and I. We needed to believe that we can create companies that can create those jobs for our children tomorrow. Companies are more than about hustling for clients to make money for us today or a shell to be used and discarded when we got what we need today. They are meant to create a legacy that makes jobs tomorrow. So, do you believe you can do that?

3 NATIONAL & COMMUNITY DIALOGUES AS FAMILIES Q: what allows industries to grow?

The decisions we make as nations and as families are strongly intertwined.

The decisions to be skilled for the agriculture and manufacturing sector bases are happening within families and households But the data used to inform the decision is based on what they would hear and say is happening “out there”.

If we think the population is not skilled to do manufacturing and in turn as families we think the country is not doing enough to create jobs in manufacturing then there right there, we have a lose-lose situation as a nation.

So make the intentions and the reasons clear and talk through the concerns surrounding the issue and figure a way to share the information as a nation. If countries around the world today can do grocery shopping online, this is not as big a step as we believe it to be.

Community Dialogues on household decisions and impact on national unemployment and vice-versa

4 CONSTRUCT REGIONAL MATRIX-ED GOODS VALUE CHAINS MAP

Get your backyard in order. Know what you want and go for it.

Figure what the latticed structure of chains of raw material supplies that are driven by what customers need as a region looks like and develop a vibrant agricultural and manufacturing bases:
– Do not be led by products that you have but rather focus on what customers want when building the matrix. Construct a map.
– Identify how one good feeds into another cost-effectively for end-customer needs within the local, regional and the global markets
– Know what is available. And what is not.
– Forget the who has what at this point. That is for a later stage when the map is completed.
– Focus on identifying critical processes on the chains, those if unavailable would stall the development of the production and the chains.
– Do not wait for another region to develop their maps and approach the country or the region to conduct the manufacturing for them. You will lose the clout you would need in managing the process and gaining value.

When the mapping is complete, you now have a working document to get your act together and move forward as a nation and the region.

5 ALIGN AND BUILD HUMAN RESOURCES

Align and, where needed, develop human resource skills dedicated to the agriculture and manufacturing sectors with a particular emphasis on acquiring both core across the nation and advanced skills in English, Mathematics and Science, particularly with Physics and Chemistry, that makes them resilient & inclusive in the two sectors.

6 BUILD UP THE PYRAMID OF THE ECONOMY

Concerted setup of corporations in the sub-sectors of: the agriculture (crop or plant / raw material production) and manufacturing that fits in with the regional industry value chain matrix map and schedule.

Economies that rely heavily on extraction industries will have large pockets of unemployment that continue to persist in the nation. These industries gross high returns but they do so by employing fewer people and more machines to keep costs of operations under control and growth of the industry. This way the GDP would certainly look good (but not the food on our tables, which is the real GDP).

Machines do not create jobs for the unemployment rates.

Plant and animal based primary production and manufacturing economic sectors when well-developed have greater potential for creating and absorbing significant employment. Extraction based industries are typically technology driven and has lower capacity for employment of human resources.

As the nation shifts its focus to production, particularly in plants, it will learn to mitigate climate effects country-by-country that would allow the region to produce consistently throughout the year to keep the manufacturing sector humming.

Invite regional and global industry leaders global industry leaders or; incentivise and groom local captains of industry (by long-term overseas stints) to lead, chart and build the sub-sectors bottoms-up including from within households and education sectors.

13 Jun 201225 May 2018 by sheilasingapore

Regional Article 23: Unemployment, labour disputes, economic diversification and fertility

Most countries think supply of labour should drive demand. We forget then (or choose not to admit to ourselves) that it is demand that drives supply in any situation. Not the other way around. It is just not realistic to believe that because we have so many ‘young ones’ here, that there should be jobs out there for them. But we do. The two however are not related in reality. But we ‘force that relationship in our minds’.

When we dug for data over time, to our surprise we were noticing that unlike what the country thought, its population was not declining. Yes, it’s overall population numbers may be dropping to attrition due to deaths (in part speeded up along by HIV/AIDs) and migration. However, its fertility rate on the other hand had been quite high and continues to grow.

English: Total Fertility Rate vs GDP per capita (2009, USD). Only countries with over 5 Million population were plotted to reduce outliers. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So what was causing its fertility rates to increase?

This was in part driven by a few reasons.

The first, and the least inconspicuous of the three was a hidden matriarchal system (the mothers and women here wield more power than it thought). This was fuelled by fears of security they held on to as young women themselves as they watched their husbands leave them for long-term employment in mines in neighbouring countries and had to learn to cope to fend for themselves and their children very quickly. Over time, this evolved to driving their children to produce more children in the belief that the more there are children within one’s own family, the more potential the family had in eventually bringing in income from their lands and the economy. It was a long-term retirement plan for the women. (Need for Security on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs)

Diagram of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Men on the other hand, played a hand in this too, each trying to outdo the other in producing children. The more children he had, the better a man he was going to be in the eyes of the persons around him. It was an immediate gratification or ego trip for the men (Need for Ego / Belonging on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs)

These children in turn grew up over time, seeing a world where they knew who were their friends and who were their enemies and this line was drawn up by who is within their core family and who was outside it (to a point it sometimes included the fathers who bore them). This often meant that as they grew up they were learning not to ‘let go of the families they were born into’ enough to build long-term relationships with their spouses (someone who is ‘outside’ their families) and their in-laws to help build core family systems (husband, wife and their children) for themselves. It was the need for maintaining or finding sense of belonging for the child or security in the familiarity or long-term childhoodness which sometimes perpetuated in older age as girlfriendhood or boyfriendhood syndrome and the need in not having to assume responsibilities for the consequences of one’s actions. (Need for Security on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs)

The core Brodie family (L-R: Adeeb, Leyla, Conor, Michael, Nicole) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hence this meant the demise of the core family system and the growth and existence of the extended family as a support system for the individuals. Today, these numbers are rising up to 70% levels. Less than 30% levels of the population stay married and these numbers continue to decline.

However, when core families do not develop within the system, the system (particularly the males) does not learn a key lesson of life which is “what it takes to hold, build and share perspectives outside its comfort zones needed for a more “collaborative, extended and systemic organizations and industrial relations” and therefore the birth and growth of corporations (by the locals).

This would lead locals themselves particularly as the males to learn to build (not just participate) the economy. For men to do so, it is in part as a result of the type of relation he enjoys with his spouse (but not his mother). The more intimate the couple is emotionally (not just physically), the greater is his sense of resilience and motivation he is able to gain to meet and overcome the challenges he would face in the world of businesses and the economy.

Sir Robert Hotung, with his 3 generations of extended family (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And so, when the economy does not grow, it is unable to create more jobs within the economy (as revenues are declining as much as costs may be rising) and therefore, unemployment continues to exist and worsens in the face of growing population numbers (fertility) which means the family in turn finds more of its people are not participating in the economy and therefore able to bring in resources into it. When this part of a man’s life is not growing, he becomes more conservative and reserved and succumbs to addictions, substance abuses and violence and a general disregard for respect for themselves and others. The signals a death knell for the economy. The organized economy suffers. The subsistence economy takes over.

Gradually, this in turn leads women to bear children outside of marital relations (most children born in this country are born to women who are not married and that trend is rising).

In the mind of the woman, bearing a child to a man (particularly if he has the means to support relative to herself) would ensure a somewhat steady source of income for their family through their children (sometimes to the point of coercing the father of the child to continue to bear expenses for it and the family) or it stops the existing male persons within the extended family to build relations outside his family in order to support the needs of the family (to children and sisters who are not married).

Have we come full circle yet? Do you see the vicious circle?

How would we treat this vicious problem?

Can the government realistically solve this problem?

Do not expect to learn to solve the problem, if one did not create the problem!

At Father’s Day, what about the men? Are they lost in the fertility story? (fertilitywellnessgroup.com)
Fees introduced for Family Court disputes (radionz.co.nz)
How Labour saved 2 million children from poverty (leftfootforward.org)
Case Study 17: Is unemployment the real problem? (sheilasingapore.com)

7 Mar 201225 May 2018 by sheilasingapore

Regional Article 17: Is unemployment real?

UNEMPLOYMENT = SUPPLY OF LABOUR > DEMAND FOR LABOUR

In a country, where levels of unemployment stay persistent over time, then it is a sign that the rates of growth of the supply of labour (population numbers -” child creation”) each year is growing at rates faster than the rate of growth of the demand for labor (job creation). And we as a nation are not noticing these two trends. Period.

When the supply consistently outstrips demand over time, we have persistent unemployment. It is an unhealthy situation (as we would have with when supply of manufactured goods exceeds their demand we would have a drop in prices, when supply of rainfall exceeds demand for water, we have rising water levels, when supply of migrant influx exceeds rate of city planning we have slums, and so on). Unemployment is a function of how these two variables are behaving relative to each other. Period.

And should the problem be led by the supply of labour, we need to be realistic to expect that the demand for labour (be they by job vacancies by the private (employment) or the government sectors (education, employment) will grow fast enough to overtake and get rid of the state unemployment in the country. Seeing scenes of citizens walking the streets looking for jobs is here to stay. Period. Again.

What influences the supply of labor?

The rate of supply of labour is influenced by the rate of the population’s growth (i.e. procreation). The only issue is the supply we see today of twenty and thirty-year olds in the labour market, was set into motion twenty or thirty years ago. By the population. The children born then have today become the youth and labour of today …. and therefore today’s unemployment.

In most cases, the populace do not see the relationship of the birth-rates of yesteryears (well pretty much like what happens between the sheets and the timing of births) and much less so their impacts on the labor supply for tomorrow. It is and is likely to stay “unrelated” in our minds for as long as these inter-relationships are not raised and discussed by all. Instead, our mind replaces that (“vacuüm in our) thought by fears of our survival or security for our future should “if “the one, two or three” dies or moves away tomorrow?” (this is the voice of the grandmother in the lesser developed countries). So, we multiply … mindlessly.

But there is a misconception and it is unfortunate!

Supply does not drive the demand for labour. This means, that ‘should there be excess labour’, it is not to say that the demand for labour should go up. It could go up for compassionate reasons but not on economic grounds. We forget that in reality, it is the demand for labour that drives its supply. Period.

What influences the demand for labour?

I sometimes joke, it is often easier to “create children” than it is to “create jobs”. But in both cases, the “jobs” are done by the “same person” – Adults. So well, how is it then that we do not see how we are attempting to solve a problem we have created by our own volition?

Also the mind that ‘looks for a job’ for oneself to feed my children, is not the mind that learns to ‘create jobs’ for others, including for our children.

So it is the fault of the ‘bosses’ for not creating jobs, or the ‘fault of the rest of us’ for not thinking about creating jobs for others (while we are busy trying to find one for ourselves)?

What influences our ability to create jobs?

It is dependent on the propensity by the same adults of the country to grow the economy, i.e. the private sector. It includes us defining the ability of the country (and sector / industries) to see :

Capital, flow into the economy (and not the family only)
Increase of the economy’s revenue and
Reduction in the costs of running the economy
Diversification of the economy (systemic growth)

As the margin between the two widens, so to does the country’s / industry’s capacity to see:

Creation of further posts for existing employees to progress into
With progression of existing employees in moving to higher level jobs, it leaves the posts vacant for younger entrants (youths) to more easily enter the labour market
More likelihood of higher wages increase across the board for all

This is dependent on the systemic development (what diversification could look like) of the economy, e.g. the story of the dairy milk production.

So, is this just a case of “not enough jobs”? Yes? Given what? We would need to complete the sentence … for everyone!

What should we be doing today to solve the problem of unemployment? Who is the ‘we’? The government? The private sector? The public sector? The citizens? The male or the man (the demand for labour?)? The female or the woman (the supply of labour?)?
What, in your view, would citizens need to understand about these realities before they begin ‘discussions about unemployment’ in the country and to figure their own ways to turn the situation around?
When should we be thinking about the solution to the problem? When we create the problem or when the problem leads us to another problem?

What are the roles of the wife, mother and the man in turning these situations around?

Which role as a woman does she have an impact on the growing the demand for labour?

Which role does she have an impact on growing the supply of labour? What is motivating her?

What roles are the men play in each of their relationships with these women? As the son or the man?

Which role of the man helps grow the demand for labour (job creation) in the economy?

As the son or the man?

But this reasoning almost also begs the question, what were we doing when ‘the spark’ sparked the problem?

Sleeping, you say?

Ahh ….. SURE!