How the young are working round pandemic-hit job market

 Labour experts say it is too soon to know exactly how this will impact the generation's lifelong career prospects, but that their path to work is unlikely to be conventional in 2021 and beyond.

When we are living in the era of Big Data, you would wish to launch a career in the field of Data Science.

But as the pandemic halted studies and wiped out employment opportunities for millions of young people around the world, the 23-year-old graduate found a silver lining - using the lockdown to launch her career as an independent screenwriter.

Akerele had always wanted to write about the experience of being Black in Britain, and as global anti-racism protests spread last year, she found people wanted to listen.

"The pandemic gave me something I didn't have before: time to write and develop my own ideas," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

From teenagers coding in their bedrooms to graduates spurning scarce entry-level jobs to set up businesses, Akerele belongs to Generation COVID - young people who will have to innovate to enter the labour market in 2021 against tough odds.

One in six young people have stopped working since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and about half reported a delay in their studies, according to a survey by the United Nations' International Labour Organization (ILO).

Labour experts say it is too soon to know exactly how this will impact the generation's lifelong career prospects, but that their path to work is unlikely to be conventional in 2021 and beyond.

"Young people are being more entrepreneurial and looking at career and employment as well as education in a more non-traditional way," said Susan Reichle, president and CEO of the International Youth Foundation, a U.S.-based nonprofit.

"The traditional sort of first jobs in the service industry, in the hospitality industry are just not there."

Bhargav Joshi was hired at the start of the year as a commis chef at a high-end Italian restaurant in Mumbai. When he was laid off due to COVID-19, he took his chef skills into his parents' kitchen and opened his own takeaway.

"It's been five months since I started. I have managed to break even and that is a big accomplishment for me," Joshi said.

The shift towards entrepreneurship and gig work was underway even before the pandemic among youth, who are three times as likely to be unemployed compared with people aged over 25, according to the ILO.

With so many applicants chasing so few jobs, screenwriter Akerele realised she could benefit more from pursuing independent projects and freelance work than sending off applications.

In October, she signed with an agency to work on a TV show about the young Black British experience.

Reichle said many young people lack the means to launch their own companies or pursue creative projects, but with more government support they could.

DIGITAL TOOLS

Kimberly-Viola Heita, 21, thought 2020 would be the year she became a student radio presenter and formed a new political society at the University of Namibia.

She was excited for her classes and debates with peers, but when the coronavirus forced the school to close many of her classmates went home to rural areas with minimal internet access. Online learning became a luxury.

Instead of disconnecting, Heita took the political science society of nearly 100 students onto WhatsApp messenger, which became a source of debate, motivation and support, she said.

"2020 has forced us to innovate, collaborate and discover resilience we didn't know we had," said Heita.

As jobs and education moved online during the pandemic, digital skills became in more demand than ever - a trend which will likely continue, said Drew Gardiner, a youth employment specialist at the ILO.

"Young people very much want to get the coding skills, the artificial intelligence skills, but also simpler stuff, like online work translating and editing," he said.

Training in such skills is not always readily available, but initiatives are springing up around the world to meet demand. Aisha Abubakar, a 33-year-old in northern Nigeria, took part in Click-On Kaduna, a World Bank pilot project last year that trained young people in digital marketing, graphics and design and how to access remote online work.