The moaning of youth : An Irony of Fate 

The moaning of youth : An Irony of Fate 

Sheikh Mahmood Al Rafsan 

The typical beginning salary for fresh graduates in Bangladesh might be as low as BDT 15-20k, which is a very disheartening reality. I'm not talking about the posh, high-paying bank jobs or the multinational FMCGs; instead, I'm referring to local businesses and organizations, which employ the majority of our fresh graduates and have a really bad salary structure. These businesses also continue to take advantage of the labor market's oversupply by paying unreasonably low wages. The practice is so common that it would be a grave error to assume that these graduates are predominantly from tier 2 or tier 3 institutions. Top companies have been known to give BUET engineers beginning wages as low as Tk 25,000 per month! Therefore, for Bangladeshi students today, the phrase "fresh graduate" is a curse.

This portrays a fairly bleak picture if we take into account the pervasively used exploitative compensation structure in the current extremely inflationary market conditions. Let's take the example of a person earning Tk 25,000 per month who shares an apartment with parents who reside in a distant city or even in a village. Let’s see how his/her monthly budget would look in this inflationary environment if we consider only the bare minimum cost: 

Monthly rent for the shared residence( "mess" as it is known in Bangladesh): 8,500-9,000 TK (including utilities and internet)

Monthly food expense: Breakfast 70tk + Lunch 120 + Dinner 120 = 310tk x 30 days = 9,300tk (increased food prices taken into account)

Cost of transportation: a roundtrip of 80 taka would now cost 93 taka due to a 16% rise in local bus tickets. Total monthly cost = 93 x 30 = 2790tk (Although in reality the bus fare has increased even more)

Let's imagine the person has to give his parents some money to help with family expenditures, which happens frequently: 3,000tk/month 

Miscellaneous or unexpected expenses : 2000tk/month

Total expenses: 25840 TK, which shows that he is in some deficit.  

In summary, a fresher who has recently joined the labor market would not be able to live in this market with a monthly pay of 25K unless his compensation is suitably adjusted with inflation/current market conditions, which is a highly improbable situation. Fresh graduates who are on their own and who also have to support their families have almost no chance when lower middle class/middle class households of four are struggling with a monthly wage of 50–60k. 

It's simply impossible to imagine the daily psychological pain they must endure. Although you cannot see their suffering, I guarantee that if you spoke to them, you would feel it. Nobody should have to handle such a scenario at such a young age, let alone at the start of their career.