Why do entry-level private jobs pay so little?
It is not rare at all that students who had been spending Tk15,000 a month during their university years are starting their careers with an equal amount per month. And their families have to learn to not expect any financial support from them for years
For the nation's fresh graduates, financial independence is an elusive concept.
In student dorms and hostels across the country, the discourse of securing a good pay at the beginning of careers is still a heated topic, underscoring the reality that as young professionals step into the job world, their remunerations often fall short of the aspirations held by their families, who bore the ever-increasing costs of their academic pursuits.
Except for banks that have a better and regulated pay structure, the multinational companies that are designed to hunt for brains and skills, and the local champion companies that are learning the importance of paying the right people well, the entry-level pay structure is frustrating in Bangladesh.
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It is not rare at all that students who had been spending Tk15,000 a month during their university years are starting their careers with an equal amount per month. And their families have to learn to not expect any financial support from them for years.
The scenario is frustrating for the country's employers too, according to apparel entrepreneur Md Fazlul Hoque, a former president of Bangladesh Employers' Federation.
If we set aside a handful of educational institutions that produce quality graduates, and the top tier firms that hire them, there continues a vicious cycle of low employability and the poor pay until the youngsters prove their worth at work, he added.
But the marriage between quality graduates and their paymasters is a small part of the full picture as rest of the employers have to keep their bets small on freshers.
"For the sake of efficiency, the employer needs an output return on how much salary they pay to each employee. And most of the time it is better to hire a skilled executive instead of spending the equal sum for two weaker team members," said Hoque, also a former president of Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA).
The knitwear industry still has to hire general managers from other countries to lead production, operations.
"Academia is there, but too disconnected to the industry," Hoque further said.
Six to seven years back, a footwear retail chain was expanding its outlets and had asked for creative designs from a number of fine arts graduates from a top local university. Brilliant designs came in from them. However, it was lacking the commercial aspects, opined international consultants. Ultimately, the company paid a lot more for a foreign designer.
But the situation is improving as some educational institutions, especially private universities, are feeling the need and addressing it.
ICT is the largest job creating industry for Bangladesh's graduates. Entrepreneurs feel that the headroom is much bigger here as the world's ICT industry is facing a crisis of affordable workers in the developed world and they are looking to the developing world for brains, said Russell T Ahmed, president of the Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS).
Former BASIS president Syed Almas Kabir, now the President of Bangladesh-Malaysia Chamber of Commerce and Industry recently said in a roundtable that 22,000 ICT graduates are coming to the job market every year and not all of them are readily employable due to the educational practices they came through.
Russell T Ahmed said the freshers have to learn on the job and training them is a cost that not all firms can afford.
The government, keeping the acute graduate unemployment problem in the country in mind, should come up with incentive programs for the industries so that firms hire more fresh graduates and train them at work.
Entrepreneurs said collaboration among industries, the government and academia is necessary for the sake of producing more skilled graduates so that the opportunity for a demographic dividend is not missed.
Sajid Amit, director of Center for Enterprise and Society at the University of Liberal Arts said alongside the academic studies, students should keep practicing better skills, including communication, for more employability.
