Whenever one listens to newscasts mostly on every radio or television stations, reports are regularly carried out on the percentages of unemployment in various world countries with some of them rising or dipping. Yet, the reports indicate that unemployment is persistent regardless of efforts aimed at ending this phenomenon which wreaks havoc among the new generations. It is a chronic global phenomenon.
Stories are frequently reverberating about university graduates who spend large sums of money to acquire education in the hope that it would ensure them a promising future and a bright life. Yet, after graduation, they realize that the job market is oversaturated to the point that they have to look for jobs that do not comply with their fields of specialization or rather remain jobless for years awaiting an open opportunity to come but still with no hope in the offing.
This critical issue was dealt with by His Holiness Pope Francis when he addressed the participants in a conference sponsored by the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican on October 8, 2022, during which he told the business leaders, theologians, and scholars that job creation, not charity, is essential for promoting sustainable development.
The foundation’s conference focused on “inclusive growth to eradicate poverty and promote sustainable development and peace,” looking at ways to promote the United Nation's sustainable development goals for 2030, and lifting people out of poverty while protecting the environment.
During the conference, the Pope said that job creation is an essential part of making sure that growth truly is “inclusive” and that it does not enrich only a few, adding that “development is either inclusive or it is not development.”
Calling on Catholics to bring Gospel-based values to the marketplace, he said, "What is needed is the humble gaze of one who sees in every man and woman he or she meets a brother and sister whose dignity must be respected, before possibly being a customer with whom to do business. He or she is a brother, a sister, a person. Only with this outlook can we fight against the evils of current speculation that feed the winds of war."
Actually with eradicating or rather containing unemployment, the dignity of people is preserved as finding jobs after long years of study is not a favor but rather an indispensable need as this eliminates numerous social ills such as robbery, crimes, addictions to alcoholism or drugs, mental and social problems leading to diseases such as suicide, and on top of this is terrorism. These are some social diseases that are caused by unemployment.
It is noticeable that violence and crimes are widespread in countries where the percentage of unemployment hits high levels and governments deal inefficiently with this soaring problem without providing a suitable panacea.
This is the right time to heed the call of His Holiness Pope Francis and to thoroughly try to solve this problem that has been pending for a long time, because unemployment wreaks havoc in societies and causes poverty which is the source of all social ills. With open job opportunities that fit the graduates' fields of study, they find an opportunity to excel in life and enrich societies with new generations who are energetic and capable to shoving their homelands towards new spheres of progress through thick and thin.
