Literature and Reality Illustrate Global Economic Nightmare

Unemployment does not merely deprive an individual of a livelihood; it systematically isolates them from society. Since antiquity, humanity has sought purpose through labour, rendering an unemployed person a living corpse. This profound humanitarian and psychological crisis has long served as a primary theme for literary figures across generations.

In his 1962 Nobel Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), American author John Steinbeck meticulously captured the bleak reality of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The narrative poignantly depicts the nomadic lives of people searching for sustenance. To encapsulate the helplessness and defiance of the jobless, Steinbeck observed that a man cannot be frightened when hunger exists not only in his own cramped stomach but also in the wretched bellies of his children, as he has known a fear beyond all others.

Historical and Literary Representations of Joblessness

Similarly, the poverty and lack of employment opportunities in Victorian England were vividly illustrated in Charles Dickens’s novels, Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. In Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Albert Camus’s The Stranger, the profound loneliness and alienation of aimless individuals reflect the psychological dimensions of unemployment.

Within Bengali literature, whilst Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novels often featured vagabondage, the harsh economic crises and lack of work became starkly apparent in Manik Bandyopadhyay’s Padma Nadir Majhi and Putul Nacher Itikatha. The tragedy of young men becoming unemployed within decaying feudal estates and rural societies was captured by Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay and Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay.

Following the partition of India, the frustration and anger of unemployed youths in Calcutta (now Kolkata) became a central theme in Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Aranyer Dinratri and Samaresh Majumdar’s trilogy Uttaradhikar, Kalbela, and Kalpurush. These works demonstrated how joblessness pushed the youth towards either revolution or moral decay.

Sunil Gangopadhyay reflected on this existential crisis of middle-class youths failing in the job market in his poem Ami Kirakombhabe Beche Achi, where he described standing by tramlines in the afternoon after failing to secure a job, questioning his own desire to live. Furthermore, Satyajit Ray’s films Pratidwandi, Seemabaddha, and Jana Aranya immortalised the humiliation, despair, and moral degradation faced by job-seeking youths in interview boards during the 1970s. Ritwik Ghatak’s film Meghe Dhaka Tara also illustrated the economic destruction of a middle-class family due to unemployment.

The humiliation in interview rooms depicted in Pratidwandi found poetic expression in the verses of Samar Sen, who wrote of stepping off a tram with tired feet, carrying only a restaurant bill and a future of emptiness in his pocket, feeling like a discarded doll in the eyes of the interviewers. Meanwhile, Sukanta Bhattacharya expressed the youth’s intense rebellion and longing for liberation from this darkness by praying to the sun for warmth and light in their damp rooms, demanding the basic right to survive. The personal toll of unemployment was also captured by Rudra Mohammad Shahidullah, whose poetry lamented five years wasted on the false consolation of marriage after securing a job, leaving behind only an unemployment certificate and a heart full of grief.

The Socio-Economic Dimensions and Institutional Failures

Unemployment is not a product of laziness; it represents a wastage of talent and an institutional insolvency that breaks the backbone of the youth. In the current economic climate, new jobs are scarce, and many individuals are facing redundancies. This crisis cannot be blamed solely on the flaws or quality of the education system, as employment depends heavily on broader socio-economic factors.

The phenomenon of highly qualified individuals remaining jobless in this region is historical. In his book Bangalanama, Oxford historian Dr Tapan Raychaudhuri (1926–2014) noted that the severity of the unemployment crisis in the 1920s and 1930s has largely faded from public memory. Even after securing the top position in both his BA and MA examinations, economist Dr Bhabatosh Datta remained unemployed for nearly seven to eight years. Similarly, Nirad C. Chaudhuri spent several years earning just one rupee a day.

The former Chief Advisor of the Caretaker Government and Chief Justice, Muhammad Habibur Rahman (1928–2014), polished shoes as a form of protest after failing to secure employment despite achieving the highest marks at the University of Dhaka. National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976) was forced to seek a livelihood in childhood as a maktu teacher, shrine custodian, and member of a Leto musical troupe. Orphaned at nine, he worked in a bakery in Asansol for a mere one rupee a month and basic food. Throughout his later life in Calcutta, he faced severe financial hardship, often relying on loans from publishers and friends, which prevented him from providing adequate medical treatment for his wife, Pramila Devi. Financial distress also forced Nazrul to serve as a common soldier in the army between 1917 and 1920.

The Contemporary Crisis and Academic Mismatch

In Bangladesh, obtaining educational qualifications is no longer a sufficient condition for securing employment. While education imparts skills, utilising those skills requires structural opportunities. Without state investment, industrialisation, and good governance, improving educational standards merely creates what economists term “elite unemployment”—a situation where highly skilled graduates are forced into underemployment.

Furthermore, nepotism, reference cultures, corruption, quota systems, and leaked exam papers routinely disqualify meritorious candidates. Even in the private sector, informal connections often override open competition. Concurrently, employers report a “skills mismatch,” finding that even top graduates lack the practical knowledge, technical proficiency, and communication skills required for corporate roles.

According to World Bank data, 14 million young people entered the Bangladeshi labour market over the past decade, yet only 8.7 million jobs were created, leaving approximately 5 million youths unemployed. The overall national unemployment rate stands at 4.48%, but the number of unemployed graduates and postgraduates is roughly 1 million. International Labour Organization (ILO) and Statista statistics reveal that youth unemployment (ages 15–24) has reached 12.4%. Because of this, the age limit for entering government service was recently extended by two years.

alarmingly, 19.54% of the youth population—approximately 5.5 million individuals—fall into the NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) category, representing a significant economic risk. This systemic failure has generated a phenomenon known as “transferred aggression,” as conceptualised by Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks (1952), where prolonged oppression and humiliation manifest as societal violence directed at vulnerable targets. Analysts suggest that the anti-government protests of July 2024 capitalised on this widespread public anger rooted in chronic youth joblessness.

Self-Employment as a Temporary Alternative

Given the sluggish pace of job creation and investment, many young people are forced to become “necessity entrepreneurs,” a term coined by Robert Fairlie, a professor of economics at the University of California, to describe individuals who start businesses because traditional employment is unavailable. Many returning migrant workers have utilised their experiences to establish livestock farms, fisheries, fruit orchards, and restaurants.

However, while self-employment provides short-term relief, macro-level unemployment cannot be resolved without large-scale industrialisation. Entrepreneurship requires specific traits that not everyone possesses. Therefore, state policy must focus on identifying potential entrepreneurs for specialized training while equipping others with vocational and technical skills.

Although technical education has expanded in Bangladesh, its quality remains contested, as many vocationally trained individuals still face joblessness. Aligning technical training with international market demands is essential to enhance the flow of remittances, which currently depend primarily on low-skilled and semi-skilled manual workers, such as taxi drivers in North America, rather than highly educated emigrants who often relocate their entire families and capital abroad. Expanding overseas employment for skilled labourers remains vital to reducing the domestic employment deficit.