I was wearing full academic dress over black tie, the heavy cotton stifling under the white spotlight. The producer backstage instructed us to walk when we heard our name. The Chancellor shook my hand and present me with a surprisingly light degree case. I smiled to the crowd and, realising that I had just spent four hours and $200 in regalia hire to be given an empty cylinder of cardboard, proceeded to the back of the theatre hall where my actual degree lay in a pile. A week later, I received an email from my mum which consisted of three SEEK listings along with the message, “hope the job search is going well!”.
"most industries simply do not have the demand for today’s graduates"
It is impossible to address the severe shortage of employment in Australia without acknowledging the saturation of highly qualified prospective employees. A rising cost of degrees has incentivised an unsustainable growth of university enrolments across the country. The 2014 AGS reports that up to 60% of university graduates are unemployed, underemployed, or are in stable employment but looking elsewhere. The response to this fact is usually that we simply chose the wrong industry; those who began mining degrees after 2011 are poster children of this misfortune. But the reality is that most industries simply do not have the demand for today’s graduates. Faced with an inevitable bracket creep, the law graduates of my cohort half-jokingly suggest to serve drinks behind a bar rather than join one.
In any circumstance, it is difficult not to feel slighted when twenty years of work yields no tangible return. Fuelled by the success stories of graduates earning a lucrative salary, our parents and teachers promised that financial stability is a fourth hoop -- the first three being primary, secondary, and tertiary education. And it is with this resentment that we observe the Boomer outrage at the budget recommendation to increase superannuation gains tax. The hot topics of negative gearing, lockout laws, the housing bubble and capital gains tax are argued ad nauseum, but are realistically a moot point if our generation won’t receive an income to consider the possibility of seeing a gig, buying a house, or accumulating super.
"the best case scenario achievable for us is a state of welfare dependence"
The recent budget also lauded a new intern scheme to put jobless graduates to work. The issue of its possible conflict with current minimum wage laws and possibility for exploitation is abundantly clear, and leads to a sobering endgame that not even a Netflix marathon can alleviate: the best case scenario achievable for us is a state of welfare dependence. Under this scheme, fresh graduates will be milled through an otherwise unwilling private sector, all for the sake of padding employment statistics. And so Gen Y are presented with a long-term outlook of continual interships, knowing full well that employers are bribed $1000 a week for every empty desk they drum up. Bluntly: if employment were riding a bicycle, the PaTH intern scheme would be a wheelchair disguised as training wheels.
Some days, I feel as though SEEK is my pokies machine. I spend time and never win, but I am drawn back by the hope that I might. After a while that hope is replaced with the force of habit.
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