Personal Funds’ and Unemployment

Influence of personal funds on employment outcome

Funds can be available to people through a variety of sources but mostly through income.The interviews suggest that people’s access to funds had played a very important role with respect to influencing their employability. In Ghana, where education at all levels is not free, lacking access to funds for tuition, living expenses and education could halt one’s educational ambitions. Families become an important source of sponsorship in such a situation. At the tertiary level, only one (Nx3) respondent claimed to have financed his education with income from part-time work. Issues with funding for self-investment WERE of the main reasons among a few other things why particularly most of the respondents from the YEP claimed to have been unable to reach what they aspired in terms of education. One respondent who lacked the funds required to enrol in a nursing training school described her situation:

Okay I have two reasons why I have not achieved that yet; some of my passes were not good and I did not pass some of my exams very well. More-over the financial support is not that strong so I have to relax and wait for some time, gather some money and write my exam then go back to school. YEP F4.

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Respondents who found themselves in a similar predicament tried various other means to acquire funds for their education. One such means was to acquire part-time work for income. Not having specialized skill sets in such a situation usually means one should engage in blue-collar jobs that do not seem to be readily available and in developing country contexts, could be also low paying.

One respondent who had to work for capital for his tertiary education said:

had to work myself and pay my school fees myself and the help that is coming from the parent are not enough because they don’t have any better work to do. My work was to sometimes farm, even farm pepper before and sometimes too you have to go load soil in the tipper trucks to be able to raise some money. Nx3.

Access to funds is not only important for investment in oneself but also to help in one’s livelihood during education as well as during potential unemployed. During the unemployment situation when an individual has to find a way to ‘survive’ until he or she gets a job, getting some monetary backing becomes very important. During the period of unemployment, respondents who did not have any personal savings had to be at the mercy of family and friends for survival. Only two respondents (i.e. Nx4, Nx12) reported having had savings that they relied upon in desperate times.

For them, savings seemed to be an important resource in hard times. One respondent described this situation: Before I got this job. I’m doing now, I had done some contracts jobs and internships., I had saved some amount during my National Service so I depended on that while home. Nx12.

Furthermore, savings seemed to be an important start-up capital for the commencement of self-employment. One respondent who had to rely on the savings of her retail shoe business said:

Sometimes you find it difficult to get the capital to go for the goods, you can’t get credit from anywhere and you don’t get any other money from anywhere just your savings’. Nx2. Filmer et al.

(2014, p183) suggest that savings allow people to raise capital for business, serve as collateral for accessing loan facilities, help to sustain people when they lose their livelihood sources and also help to cushion people when they decide to make certain investments that entail some amount of risk. Furthermore, the burden to contribute money for household use reduces propensities to save.

Based on the findings, personal funds seem to play an important role in influencing employability.

To a large extent personal funds are important for investment in education and as start-up capital.

Being employed is the easiest and most common way people make money. Unemployment inherently has impacts on economic capital.

69 Influence of unemployment on access to funds

Economic resources are important because they facilitate change and development in real-life circumstances. The absence of economic resources inhibits the attainment of the needs and development of the individuals. The fundamental need of personal funds for most people is to meet the needs, wants and ultimately build a capital base of which there could be further improvement in life. Unemployment poses a threat to meeting such aspirations and findings from the research showed that the absence of a regular income meant a lot of struggle for most respondents. One respondent described the situation like this:

There is no other income coming from anywhere so sometimes how to get your stuff every day (is a problem). You have to feed yourself three times daily but looking at conditions it has reduced to two times so life becomes difficult you have to get your pomade, soap and all. How to provide for your utilities and all that has been a problem, it (is) very difficult!

Nx3.

Meeting basic needs is one of the reasons why economic capital is very important. Struggling to do so is usually one of the driving forces behind ill activities in society. As already discussed, insufficient opportunities for work and income seem to increase the propensity of people to engage in crime but before a person, willingly or through influence, decides to engage in a certain crime for financial returns, the person usually has found him or herself in a dire need for economic resources. In the literature review for example, it was seen how in Uganda, sex work was adopted by many young women as a strategy to survive the extreme poverty accompanied with unemployment (Namugala, 2017, p71). It is no wonder that desperation for ‘survival’ plays a role in such decisions to partake in activities like these. In this research, the findings indicated that some young men who find themselves in similarly desperate situations become susceptible to gambling activities. Gambling in the form of sports betting has become rampant among young men usually without work. These young men use their meagre money to bet on sports games with hopes of getting bigger returns if their predictions come through. One respondent had this to say about betting:

‘People turn to do things in any way they can to get money for their upkeep. some will probably take into betting, online betting to make some money. They are betting on football

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matches they are betting on soccer, they are betting on basketball, they are betting on horse racing, tennis, all those games. Yes, so that is one of the things people take up.’ Nx4 At the end of the day, as usual, most of those that bet lose their money with just some few ones being lucky enough to earn something more, with the struggles continuing for the unlucky ones.

This is very similar to Uganda, where young men usually considering sports gambling as income-earning activities, invest a lot in their resources betting on games (Namugala, 2017, p71).

4.3.2 Access to Credit and Employability