How to talk about employment differently? Public doctrine of the discourse on employment at the Ministry of Employment, Vocational Training and Employment (MEFPT) - By Cheikh Ahmadou Abdul GUEYE (Part 1)

The public debate on employment is often dominated by the same words, the same figures, and the same anxieties: unemployment, job insecurity, informality, exclusion. Data from the National Agency for Statistics and Demography (ANSD) reveals labor market indicators that are never positive: unemployment rates exceeding 20%, NEET rates exceeding 30%, and employment rates at their lowest. The diagnostic report on the labor market and employment, recently produced as part of the development of the National Employment Policy, confirms the trends highlighted by the data. This worrying reality exists and must be taken seriously. But by focusing solely on the difficulties of employment, we have created a narrative that discourages more than it motivates, that confines more than it offers opportunities.

What if the issue weren't just about employment itself, but also, and perhaps even more importantly, about how we talk about it? In their analysis of the social construction of reality, Berger and Luckmann remind us of something essential: social reality is never fixed. It is constructed, shared, and stabilized by discourses, categories, and institutions. In other words, the way a society talks about employment profoundly shapes how it thinks about and acts on it.

Through discourse focused almost exclusively on unemployment, we have gradually constructed a representation of employment as a field of permanent crisis. This representation has become institutionalized, repeated in the media, public policies, and sometimes even within families, to the point of becoming a social given. However, speaking of the unemployed does not simply designate an administrative situation; it produces a social identity. Talking about young people without jobs often makes us forget that we are also talking about young people in training, in transition, retraining, searching for their path. Language does not merely describe the reality of employment: it contributes to producing it, to solidifying it, sometimes to limiting it, and even to "sedimenting" it, to borrow the language of the authors of The Social Construction of Reality.

Research in linguistics allows us to go even further. Some statements do more than simply describe a reality: they produce concrete effects simply by being uttered. In public policy, to speak is often already to act. When an institution declares that a sector is "unpromising," it is not merely recording a trend: it is contributing to diverting investment, discouraging career aspirations, and influencing educational choices. When public discourse repeatedly states that young people are not employable, it is not making a neutral observation: it is influencing perceptions, confidence, and the behavior of both employers and young people themselves.

Discourse on employment is therefore performative. It produces real effects on the labor market, on individual career paths, and on the credibility of institutions. This is why it cannot be considered mere rhetoric of support. It is an integral component of public policy. Talking about employment differently thus means taking powerful symbolic actions: recognizing skills, opening up possibilities, legitimizing career paths, and restoring confidence. Conversely, poorly managed discourse can unintentionally produce exclusion, discouragement, and self-censorship. Talking about employment differently therefore begins with an awareness: our words have a structuring power. They can confine or liberate, discourage or mobilize, silence or reveal dynamics that are nonetheless very real.

Changing the narrative on employment doesn't mean denying the difficulties. It means shifting the focus of the story: from scarcity to potential, from inevitability to transformation, from exclusion to pathways. The reality of employment isn't solely defined by shortages. It's also made up of evolving professions, redefined skills, changing sectors, and local initiatives that create value and promote social inclusion. Too often, these dynamics remain invisible because they don't fit the dominant narrative of the crisis.

Talking about employment differently means making these realities visible, without naivety but also without cynicism. It means accepting that career paths are no longer linear, and that employment is now built in stages, through adjustments, through successive learning.

In the debate on employment in Senegal, two concepts recur with almost incantatory force: employability and the mismatch between education and employment. They have become obvious explanations, often invoked to account for youth unemployment. But by being repeated without question, they end up producing more simplification than understanding. Employability is most often presented as an individual quality: to be or not to be employable. This interpretation implicitly suggests that access to employment depends primarily, or even exclusively, on the skills, attitude, or adaptability of individuals. In this framework, unemployment becomes a personal failing, and responsibility silently shifts from economic structures to individuals.

However, in our African contexts, this view is profoundly reductive. Employability is not an intrinsic and stable property. It is relational, contextual, and socially constructed. It depends as much on the structure of the economy, the nature of the jobs created, recruitment practices, access to information, networks, and the credibility of institutions as it does on individual skills. One is not inherently employable; one becomes so or not within a given environment.

The concept of a skills mismatch between education and employment rests on a similar logic. It assumes the existence of a structured labor market capable of absorbing available skills and suggests that the main problem lies in training that is poorly aligned with economic needs. This assumption is partially true, but largely insufficient.

In many African countries, particularly Senegal, the central challenge is not simply the mismatch between education and employment, but the structural weakness of the demand for productive and decent work. More training or better training is insufficient when economies create few formal jobs, when the vast majority of career paths unfold informally, and when these paths are discontinuous, hybrid, and often non-linear. Presenting the education-employment mismatch as the primary cause of unemployment is therefore a reversal of reasoning: training is tailored to jobs that do not yet exist, instead of simultaneously considering productive transformation, job creation, and support for actual career trajectories. These two concepts, employability and mismatch, are not neutral. They have a performative effect. As linguistics has shown, some statements do not merely describe reality; they produce social effects simply by being uttered. Saying that a generation is not very employable or that the training is inadequate affects collective representations, the confidence of young people, the choices of employers and the priorities of public action.

Debates about employment often oscillate between two opposing interpretations. On the one hand, an individual-centered approach, which emphasizes employability, personal effort, and adaptation. On the other, a structural interpretation, which highlights economic constraints, a lack of opportunities, and institutional failures. This opposition, widely present in public discourse, is nevertheless misleading. Career paths are never purely individual, nor are they entirely determined by structures. They are built within interdependent relationships, at the intersection of personal choices, social norms, institutions, and economic dynamics. The individual and society are not opposed: they co-produce each other. Applied to employment, this interpretation allows us to move beyond the false dilemma between individual and collective responsibility. A young person never navigates the labor market alone. Their choices, aspirations, and possibilities are shaped by their family, educational, territorial, and institutional environment. Conversely, institutions are not abstractions: they act through practices, rules and discourses carried by individuals.

Sheikh Ahmadou Abdul GUEYE

Director of Employment at the Ministry of Employment and Vocational and Technical Training.