BEIRUT: Across the Middle East, young graduates are striving for a decent job opportunity. Unfortunately, it’s often a failed attempt.

“Not a day passes without hoping that one day I’ll be able to work in Lebanon and move back home. It’s unfair,” Rami Abbas, 25, an LAU graduate said.

Abbas has been applying for jobs in Lebanon for four years and failed to find a place to work with a salary that can cover his basic expenses.

But he has a profound attachment to his home country and hasn’t given up on it yet, believing that one day this country will have a place for him.

He currently lives in Saudi Arabia, and works in STC (Saudi Telecom Company). But he continues to apply for jobs back home.

Abbas is one of many youth who must grapple with an increasingly perplexing job market in order to make ends meet. Youth unemployment in Lebanon, say some studies, is four times greater than adult unemployment. The United Nations puts youth unemployment rates at 20 percent.

It’s a condition that has driven many of the country’s young people out in search of a better living, with some analysts describing migration as the “safety valve” of Lebanese unemployment. “Migration is the valve that has been put on unemployment. If it were not for migration we would have much more unemployment,” chairman of the Center for Development Studies and Projects Riad Tabbarah told The Daily Star in an interview.

Abbas blames the government for his misfortunes. He said that many regional offices for multinational telecommunication companies were once based in Lebanon. But poor revenues and political unrest have driven those offices out, reducing job opportunities available to tech-savvy youngsters.

“Expensive telecommunication and low speed Internet drove away most regional offices for multinational offices and made us lose hundreds of jobs,” Abbas said.

Young entrepreneur Ahmad Shaaban discusses youth unemployment in Lebanon in a different way. He chalks the problem up to local Lebanese corporate culture.

“There’s a real issue with Lebanese culture in terms of acceptance and work ethic,” the 22-year-old said. Shaaban believes that youngsters are getting hired unethically. Most, he reckons, are able to get jobs because of certain connections they have and not because of their qualifications.

Shaaban now relies on the Internet company AIESEC, for financial support. AIESEC is the world’s largest student driven organization, which aims to connect students with internships and other learning experiences. It has offices in over 110 countries and includes over 60,000 members. Each student must add to the AIESEC network, making a commission out of each person that becomes a member through them.

Shaaban has over a 1,000 people in his own network. He juggles his time between studying toward his college degree and the job.

Shaaban joined the group with many young undergraduates and graduates in the Middle East. These young entrepreneurs, said Shaaban, decided to rely on themselves, rather than on corporations that don’t value their employees, and to create their own stable business.

A 2008 study conducted by the International Labor Organization about youth unemployment at the regional and international levels has identified some of the problem’s trends and roots.

Youth unemployment, the ILO states, has primarily hit people below 25 years of age and affected young women more adversely than young men. Youth unemployment has been relatively low in terms of duration for those below the age of 17, but its average is around one year for those aged between 24 and 25 years. This condition is exacerbated by some disheartening macroeconomic trends. First, inflation, budgetary deficits and public debt have been deteriorating in recent years. Second, the recruitment practices of employers rely primarily on personal contacts. Finally, the presence of foreign laborers continues to be massive.

“Political views and sectarianism plays a big role in employment requirements nowadays, especially in Lebanon,” Tala al-Riz, 22, a LAU graduate, said.

“Instead of asking me what my strengths were, recruiters were asking me where I was from and my political views,” al-Riz said. She is now an unemployed graduate who only a month ago gave up on the idea of working in Lebanon and began to apply for jobs abroad.

“The constraints on the economy, job market, and business environment for the youth exacerbate Lebanon’s ‘Brain Drain.’ The youth live in a society where they feel their basic needs are not met. The most logical solution is to leave Lebanon for a better life and become one more number in the ever-growing ‘Brain Drain,’” Maryam Hoballah, a Lebanese economist, said.

Hoballah is an AUB graduate and has been researching this issue for two years for an AUB youth employment study. She believes that the liberalization and privatization of different sectors, such as electricity and telecommunications, would do a great deal to mitigate the problem.

Hoballah believes that another way to improve youth conditions is by modernizing legislation, to encourage investment and fight corruption. There is a feeling of separation between the youth and the state, she said.

The younger generation tends to think and write of ideals such as democracy, transparency and accountability. But these principles are not practiced nor are they appreciated by the government. It is vital to engage the youth in the building of the future and, in order to do so, these ideals must be focused on, she said.

Hoballah believes that Lebanon’s government should enforce policy changes such as price controls on housing for the young and push banks to improve student loan packages. This would ease the typically large cost burdens young graduates must deal with, she said.

“To get the youth to take part in the economy is an achievement within itself – a win-win situation. It leads to economic development as the economy grows and individuals are threaded into the fabric of the economy – the government needs to realize this,” Hoballah added.