Putting trained labour power to work: the dilemma of education and employment

Demographic factors and educational changes are producing, in many less developed countries, a "pushdown effect" in which recent graduates are forced to take jobs that would earlier have been filled by those with less education. In Indonesia, for example, 1990 senior high school graduates will have to take jobs that were filled by junior high school graduates in 1980 as a result of increases in the supply of educated manpower. While the increase in employment positions in Indonesia is under 5%/year, the number of graduates from junior high school, senior high school, and universities is exceeding this increase. Each year, there is an excess of 2.60 junior high school graduates and 3.83 senior high school graduates/1000 labor force in terms of availability of the types of jobs filled by people with these educational qualifications in 1980. The pushdown effect has further resulted in a fall in the educational differential of income. Between 1976-86, earnings for employees with less than a primary school education quintupled while those for employees with college degrees did not even triple. The presence of large numbers of disillusioned, overqualified workers in the labor force is a potential source of social unrest and there is a need for serious attention to the changing relationship of job and educational status. Possible solutions to this discrepancy include: expansion of the economy; restructuring of economic workers; reorientation of the educational system to enhance the productivity of graduates; raising the status of employment in agriculture and rural small industry; and acceptance by the labor force that the pushdown effect is an inevitable stage of the development process.