DOCUMENTARY: Generation Jobless

KS and I love documentaries. We’re nerds like that. The internet is a great source for viewing free docs. CBC’s DocZone has some goodies and are especially relevant to Canadians. Ted Talks aren’t exactly documentaries but there are some interesting discussions on there. To me, the best docs are inspirational or open my eyes to a subject that I didn’t know a lot of about before. I’m not into docs that are overly negative or those that make me feel like I’m being brainwashed.

I recently watched a doc called “Generation Jobless” on CBC’s DocZone. The doc explores the struggle facing Canadian young people (25-30ish) when it comes to finding jobs. It highlights the high rates of unemployment and under-employment in this age group. Since this is my generation, this topic was especially interesting to me. People are calling us the “lost generation”... questioning whether we will be able to buy the baby boomers’ (our parents’) houses...worried that social programs will be not be able to funded in the future.

 

The doc discusses the potential causes of this problem: changes in technology and an unsteady economy. The baby boomers will eventually retire but their jobs are “retiring” with them. Also, when times are tough for businesses, they tend to not want to spend time/money investing in new grads. Another interesting issue is that there seems to be a complete disconnect between the university program acceptance numbers and the number of available jobs in the fields that these university programs are intended to feed into (ex. teaching). According to the doc, the key players – universities, businesses, and governments – are not doing enough to address this growing problem.

 

When I was in high school, I didn’t have a clue what career was right for me. I applied for five completely different university programs. When I think back on what led to my university program choices, it was pretty much by chance. I’m very lucky to have ended up where I am. Maybe the problem is that the focus in high school is on picking a post-secondary program and not focused on picking a job.

 

I personally benefited hugely from a co-op program at the university level. I wonder why co-op programs are not encouraged to more students and earlier. In my experience, the co-op program offered in high school was not promoted in general and especially not to students on the “university path”.

 

After watching this doc, it was clear to me that there are a lot of complicated issues in the areas of education and employment.  It’s worth a watch!

http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/episode/generation-jobless.html
 

Other interesting docs I’ve seen recently:

-          One day on Earth

-          Inside Job

-          The Invisible War

-          Chimpanzee J

-C