October 12, 2020

Many young people are discovering that their dreams of emerging into a dynamic job market after high school or graduation have been severely disrupted by the ongoing health crisis. In ‘Covid Has Wiped Out the Economic Dreams of a Generation in Asia,’ (Bloomberg, 2020) examples such as Pavisa Ketupanya, 26, who recently obtained her commercial pilot’s license highlight these unavoidable realities. Unable to enter sectors such as aviation, which is currently shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs rather than recruiting, she is relying on what was previously a hobby – eyelash extensions – to generate income. She tells Bloomberg, “It earns a fraction of my pilot job, but it’s better than nothing.”

Youth unemployment has affected Asia more acutely than other regions of the world, with its relatively young population and aspirational middle class previously the main driver of global economic growth. Compared with the upward trajectory in 2019, where the Asia-Pacific region accounted for over 2/3 of global growth, 2020 and beyond are estimated to be periods of contraction and negative growth for the first time since the 1960s.

Professor Yeung (NUS CFPR and Department of Sociology) provided commentary on the strained relations between generations, with young people increasingly turning to their parents and grandparents for financial assistance: “This time the impact is much worse… And this time it is going to last longer so the impact is going to be much more severe,” with the Covid-19 shock creating a class of ‘new poor’ across Asia. The World Bank estimates an additional 38 million people to be living under the poverty line by the years end, adding onto the already sizeable 517 million Asians that were already living in poverty.

There are some small shafts of hope, however, with certain sectors, such as IT and the gig economy (on-demand workers with short term contracts), having managed to weather the storm through remote working and the high demand for food delivery and online shopping during the ongoing period of social distancing. This is where the majority of Asia’s younger generation are basing themselves for the near- and medium-term future.

Read the full article here.