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Project Mercury

Tackling unemployment among people with lower educational attainment amid COVID 19

Problem
Why unemployment?

This rise in the unemployment rate seen in the middle of COVID could be categorized as structural unemployment. This occasion is usually due to the rapid growth of technology, however, due to the impact of COVID, many services are now obsolete. Workers can no longer gather in a factory with a very dense population density, so if workers are not equipped with adequate skills to join other industries, they will face marginalization. Especially, it is tougher for people who didn't receive a higher level of education, it is hard for them to find a job when they have been working in the manufacturing or hospitality industry for half of their lifetime. 

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This is an urgent global problem as unemployed people still need to pay for bills even if they don't have an income source. However, as COVID is still spreading like wild fire in some countries and the economic future is still unclear, we cannot put hope in reopening factories in the near future. In this case, I would like to figure out a viable solution to help people who have lower levels of education to get job traning and get an online job. 

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Problem

Research

Research

I researched how COVID had affected the economy and employment in three countries: the U.S., China, and Kenya. These three countries each followed a slightly different economic system, meanwhile, each's main economic revenue sectors are different from each other. I wish that after researching about all of them, I could cross-compare them and find the similarity in their problems and provide a solution that could be used to solve COVID unemployment globally. 

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United States

- Mixed economic system

- Largest economic sectors: Healthcare, Technology, Retail

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China

- Mixed socialist market economy

- Largest economic sectors:

Manufacturing, Services, Agriculture

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Kenya

- Mixed economic system with centralized economic planning

- Largest economic sectors: Agriculture and Horticulture

engagemnt

Engagement 

Email Survey and Phone call interview

Kenya

I have contacted Mr. L, (contact info provided by Ms. Chen), who is in Kenya and since he is working to improve Kenya's education for younger children, Since there isn't much about Kenya's current situation online, I thought it would be great if he could provide some primary resources or personal experience about how has life changed since the pandemic started and whether he and his colleagues have any potential plans to help children get prepared for career during the post COVID period.

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Question 1: How has COVID impacted your life? ​

Answer: I lost my job in Costa Rica, and my business in Kenya was not doing well since the tenant was mostly out of work. I couldn’t let my tenants leave because they had nowhere to go and they had children who were also not going to school since schools have been closed.

Since the situation was not good for everyone, I offered to work for my father’s security business as a manager until January when I got a job as a County Director for Conservation.

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Questions 2: How has teenagers' life changed? Did teenagers(>10 years old) participate in any part-time job before COVID? Are these teenagers out of jobs and still trying to look for a mother job opportunity?

Answer: Unfortunately, in my country, no one gives teenagers >10 any job until they finish either college or university. Jobs in Kenya are best on the degree certificate. If you don’t have any education or primary/secondary education, you don’t get any kind of job. We have thousands of graduates not having jobs, so high schoolers don’t even get a chance in this case.

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Question 3: What are the main websites people use to look for jobs or job training?

Answer:

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China

I set up an interview with an officer from the municipal unemployment department within the district I live in(ChaoYang District, Beijing). At the time I call the officer for a short interview, COVID cases in China was already under control.

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Me: "How many unemployed cases had been reported due to the pandemic?"

Officer: "There is only a few cases of  farmers who experienced holdups in their agricultural products like dried fruits, peaches, etc. However, as the economy rebounded, these farmers‘ revenue are slowly recovering.  Employees who works at a private or governmental company didn't experience unemployment too much because many companies quickly shift to online working Manufacturing companies closes for about 1.5 months before slowly recruiting people back to start working. "

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Me: "How did the local government help these farmers?"

Officer: "Them were asked to fill out form to see if they are qualified for any subsidies. Also, the community center helped these farmers to advertise their agricultural product and posted many ads online to let more people be aware of this and help consume their product."

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The U.S.

US: Illinois Job Link hasn't responded yet about my request of contacting any of the unemployeds that have registered through their site. 

Solution

Solution
How to solve this? 

There are different economic theories on solving this problem, and one of them is to promote the education process and let unemployed workers be prepared to enter different industries where jobs can match up to their newly learned skills. 

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People can be connected with college programs that developed skills to work as technical assistants, customer service rep, game tester, online shop owner, or call reviewer. These job skills could be learned through online training, and are relatively easy to learn. 

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I wanted to build a platform to help evaluate the unemploye's current skill and find the most suitable training program for him/her. Since some people have worked at the former industry for such a long period, they might feel frustrated about what they can now do for a living. This website will be similar to the Ajira's online work registration page. It will ask for their basic information and then move on to the evaluation questions like which industry have you worked in before? Are you good at using technology products? Do you prefer talking to others or writing down your thoughts? Then the website will show the result of thevaluation which is what type of job is suitable for him or her and where are the job training lessons available. 

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For training lessons, I will do my best to find tutorials and open platform resouces. If I cannot find any, then I will reach out to undergraduates who are learning related majors and ask if they would like to volunteer in recording training videos. This will benefit the unemployees and also these college students by enriching their resume. 

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