A job or self employed?

Wendy at Homeschool-Curriculum-for-Life.com is my guest blogger today. She shares her thoughts about whether it better to look for a job or be an entrepreneur:

Entrepreneurship for teens is a hot topic these days. As a parent of a soon-to-be teen, my thoughts are turning more and more towards her future. I knew very early on that our children cannot look forward to a job in the public/private sector due to certain imbalances of the political past in our country (Wendy lives in South Africa) . But even if this were not the situation, I would still not consider a career working for another person as an ideal.

Why not a job in the public sector? My reasons:

We need to realize that jobs are not secure these days just because our children have graduated from school and college with a degree – a degree is not an automatic pass into a job anymore.

I have seen many homeschooled and public schooled teens come to the end of their schooling and not know what they want to do with the next few years of their lives. Some are so out of touch with their passions and interest that they opt to travel for a year on their parent’s expense. This is not an option for us.

Other teens have not been trained in responsibility or with business skills and are thus totally unprepared to begin an entrepreneurial venture or even hold down a summer job. These young people think that the only way to make money will be to get a job as a waiter or waitress.

In this country 30% of our population is unemployed, this means that to each job there are hundreds of applicants. Our local newspaper states: “At least a third of the 351,503 who finished school will still be unemployed a year from today, while half will battle to find jobs.” Taken from a newspaper article dated 11 January 2007.

By raising a child to think entrepreneurially they will be able to provide much needed employment to others.

Wendy has more to say here.