Yaneek Page | Stop telling unemployed graduates to ‘just start a business’

For over a year, my friend’s son has been waking up to the same unsettling routine: tailor his résumé, modify the cover letter, submit the applications, keep checking for a response, and continue to wait with fading hope. Mind you, the bright young Jamaican has done everything he has been told by society and his nurturing parents to do. He studied hard, earned his engineering degree and graduated ready to help build Jamaica. Yet today he is still unemployed. This energetic, eager and well-trained engineer is one of 21,000 youth estimated to be jobless and locked outside the formal economy. According to STATIN’s latest numbers to June, youth unemployment climbed to 11.7 per cent in April, up from 10.1 per cent a year prior. Young people are now three times more likely than the average Jamaican to be unemployed.

So, his story is not unusual, and neither is the advice he keeps getting: “Why doesn’t he just start a business?”

Let me declare my bias. As an entrepreneur, I have spent nearly 20 years training upcoming entrepreneurs, designing entrepreneurship programmes and writing about small business. I’m deeply passionate about this field. Therefore, it may surprise you to hear me say this unapologetically: stop telling unemployed graduates to start a business. Yes, entrepreneurship can be a powerful path, but it is not a parachute or catch all. The tendency to prescribe it as the cure or antidote for graduate unemployment is like telling a drowning man to build a boat.

Here is why it’s not the right answer at this time:

1. The country needs him as an engineer. Full stop! – We’re rebuilding roads, homes, power lines and public and private buildings after the strongest hurricane ever hit our shores. Indeed, in public pronouncement after pronouncement, the Government has appealed to Jamaicans overseas to come home and help rebuild. Yet the Jamaicans who never left, and are ready, willing – and even desperate to do exactly that, can’t find a way in. How can young engineers sit at home while we lament technical skills gaps and talk about importing labour? As old people woulda seh, “wanti wanti cyaan getti, an’ getti getti nuh want it.” The talent is already here. We need a bridge between that talent and the work.

2. Every degree is not a business plan – My friend’s son did not spend years at university doing courses like Thermodynamics and Structural Mechanics, Statics and Strength of Materials, Chemistry for Engineers, the Engineering Profession, Technical Writing, or Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer to become an accountant, marketer and salesman overnight. Like many other technically skilled youth, he may likely have no product idea, or desire to run a company, much less access to capital. Years ago, I wrote in this column that the right attitudes and soft skills matter far more in entrepreneurship than any technical training. Pushing someone into business without the hunger or the preparation is the fastest road to failure, debt and disillusionment.

3. Desperation is not a strategy – I’ve said this before, necessity-based entrepreneurship, which is launching a business because there is no other option, is a flawed approach. The data show that it is opportunity based entrepreneurship that has the highest likelihood of success. Many businesses still take years rather than months, to generate substantial profits. A graduate with bills due can ill afford to wait for extended period to pay himself from the business, if at all.

4. Money just got more expensive – Just last week, on September 29, the Bank of Jamaica raised its policy rate by 50 basis points to 6.0 per cent, its first increase since 2022, as inflation climbed to 7.9 per cent. Conflict in the Middle East and the Russia-Ukraine war continue to drive up the cost of fuel, food, travel & logistics and raw materials, etc. In simple terms that means more expensive loans, thinner margins and customers with less to spend. These are hardly the conditions to launch an untested venture, let alone using borrowed money.

5. The economy is still bleeding – Nearly a year after catastrophic Hurricane Melissa, the costliest storm in our history which caused damage exceeding 50 per cent of our GDP, many firms are still repairing balance sheets and holding back on hiring. Meanwhile, the business process outsourcing sector, a long a safety net for graduates, has shrunk from about 62,000 jobs to roughly 50,000 in two years by Government’s count, with local spending down US$220 million in a single year. Even a graduate who never wanted a call centre job feels that loss through weaker demand and fiercer competition for every opening.

Now let’s go back to that missing bridge I mentioned earlier, because some solutions are hiding in plain sight and are well within our reach. First, reconstruction contracts funded by taxpayers should require contractors to hire and mentor a quota of local graduate engineers and technicians. Second, the Government should offer targeted tax incentives to engineering, manufacturing and technology firms that create structured entry-level roles. Third, the public and private sectors should build effective placement programmes that match graduates with industries reporting skills shortages – and certainly before anyone signs off on importing labour.

For the avoidance of doubt, no one is saying young people should not start businesses. Many of them should, and I will keep supporting the ecosystem that helps them do it. But entrepreneurship works best as a choice, not last resort, that is made with eyes open, capital in hand and the viable opportunity in view. It should never be a consolation prize handed out because the job market failed them.

Graduates don’t need vague lectures about becoming their own boss in this context. They need a reasonable chance to do what they are trained for, and to earn a living, and help rebuild Jamaica.

One love,

Yaneek Page is the program lead for Market Entry USA and a certified trainer in Entrepreneurship