Qualified but uncertain: clarity, confidence and courage for Sri Lanka's young graduates

For over 30 years, much of my work has involved helping people make sense of where they are in their careers and where they might go next. I have worked with people of different ages, in very different sectors and in different parts of the world. But there is something particularly troubling about what I am seeing amongst young graduates in Sri Lanka today.

These are not young people who have failed to try. Many have done exactly what was expected of them. Work hard for your O/Ls. Do well in your A/Ls. Go to the tuition classes. Make the sacrifices. Win a university place. Graduate - and, somewhere at the end of all that effort, there should be a job.

For far too many, that job is simply not there. They have studied, sat the examinations and earned their degrees. They have done everything we asked of them, and now they are facing a long and uncertain wait between university and work.

I keep hearing the same question, in different forms: "I did everything I was supposed to do. Why isn't it working?"

There are two parts to the answer. The first is obvious: there are simply not enough of the right jobs. But there is another part which I think we need to talk about. Have we prepared our young people for a world of work that no longer works in the way many of us were brought up to expect?

We need to be very clear about this. There is a shortage of jobs, and we cannot coach our way out of that. But while the bigger economic work goes on, there are things we can do to help young people understand what they bring, protect their confidence and find another route when the expected one is not there.

What the numbers tell us - A regional outlier

In September 2026 the IMF's Finance & Development magazine published an analysis of youth employment across Asia, titled "Graduating into Uncertainty". It puts unemployment among Sri Lankans aged 15-24 with post-secondary education at around 43%. That is the highest of the 12 Asia-Pacific economies compared, just ahead of India at around 42%, well ahead of Bangladesh at around 36% and more than three times Thailand's 13.2%.

Krishna Srinivasan, director of the IMF's Asia and Pacific Department, described the regional picture this way: "Highly educated young workers are struggling to find positions that match their qualifications."

What our own data say

Sri Lanka's Department of Census and Statistics publishes its own figures in the annual Labour Force Survey. The 2025 report shows a labour market that is improving overall but is still very hard on young people entering it. National unemployment was 3.9%, yet youth (15-24) unemployment was 19.5%. Among young people with GCE A/L and above it was 22.5% - down from 39.3% in 2021, but still above the youth average. The Department notes that new youth cohorts entering the labour force after higher education show higher unemployment rates. An estimated 39,680 graduates aged 20 and above were unemployed, and 50.1% of them held Arts degrees.

Gender and geography matter too. Young women faced an unemployment rate of 24.5%, against 16.5% for young men; among people of all ages with A/Ls and above, the rate was 8.3% for women and 3.9% for men. Youth unemployment was 27.2% in Sabaragamuwa and 26.8% in the Southern and Uva provinces, compared with 15.1% in the Western Province. Some 73,557 people were classed as discouraged job seekers: people who had stopped looking because they did not believe they would find suitable work, could not find any work, or felt they lacked the necessary skills.

The IMF's 43% and the Department's 22.5% are measuring different things, so they should not be read as contradictory figures. The groups, definitions and data sources differ. The Department also advises caution with some youth and provincial estimates because of sampling variation. But the message is still difficult to ignore: education does not necessarily make that first step into work easier.

The jobs gap ahead

The World Bank expects nearly one million young Sri Lankans to enter the job market over the next decade. Without stronger growth and more private investment, it estimates the economy will create only around 300,000 new formal jobs. Speaking at a jobs forum in Colombo in June, World Bank Group Country Manager Gevorg Sargsyan warned that at the current pace, "only one-third of them are expected to get into formal, quality jobs."

This is why I am uncomfortable when the answer to graduate unemployment is simply, 'make young people more employable'. There is a shortage of jobs. Sri Lanka needs investment, growth and many more opportunities. We cannot coach our way out of that. Everything that follows needs to be read alongside this reality, not instead of it.

The Sri Lankan context - Growing up with uncertainty

Today's graduates have lived through one disruption after another. The pandemic interrupted schooling and university. The 2022 economic crisis brought fuel queues, power cuts and soaring prices. Then came Cyclone Ditwah. This year, with conflict in the Middle East squeezing fuel supplies, state institutions, schools and universities moved to a four-day week.

Imagine trying to plan your adult life against that background. A young person can quite reasonably begin to think: plans change, things fall apart, and what looks certain today may not be certain tomorrow. That does something to the way we approach the future.

A pension, a title and a long wait

In Sri Lanka, a permanent, pensionable government post has long represented security. I understand why. It brings stability, status and a pension in a country where private-sector work has often felt much less certain.

That expectation runs deep. In June 2026, members of the Unemployed Workers' Union protested outside the Presidential Secretariat under the slogan "Employment is a Right", calling for recruitment into government institutions. In September the Opposition Leader asked in Parliament when the graduate jobs promised at the elections would materialise. The government says it is recruiting 120,000 people into the public sector.

Public recruitment will make an enormous difference to those who get those jobs, and governments should of course be held to their commitments. But the state cannot employ every graduate. And there is another cost which is easy to miss: the cost of waiting. Skills fade. Gaps appear on CVs. People lose confidence. Eventually some stop believing that anything they do will make a difference.

Leaving

Others leave. The Central Bank records 310,915 departures for foreign employment in 2025, with 76.2% classified as skilled. For an individual, leaving may be a sensible and courageous decision, and remittances matter enormously to families and to the country. But I find it difficult not to ask what it means when leaving begins to look like the obvious answer for so many of the people Sri Lanka has spent years, and considerable public money, educating.

The degree you did not choose

There is another very Sri Lankan part of this story that I think receives too little attention. Many students do not really choose the subject they eventually study at university. Z-scores and district cut-off marks can determine where they go and what they study. A young person may have hoped for one field and find themselves admitted to another.

So someone can spend years earning a degree they did not fully choose, and arrive at the end without ever having had much opportunity to work out how that degree connects with the world of work. When jobs are scarce, that leaves them with two problems rather than one: not enough opportunity, and not enough clarity about where else they might fit.

The weight of "Still no job?"

Sri Lankan families are often an enormous source of strength. Parents make real sacrifices for education. But sacrifice can understandably bring expectation too - a particular job, a certain status, perhaps even a timetable. So when a graduate keeps hearing "Still no job?" at family gatherings, something that began as an economic problem can very quickly start to feel like a judgement about them.

What uncertainty can do to confidence

The research on unemployment is consistent. A large meta-analysis by Paul and Moser (2009) found that unemployment is associated with poorer mental health, including more distress, depression and anxiety and lower self-esteem. Importantly, the evidence suggests unemployment contributes to poorer mental health, rather than simply the other way round.

For graduates there is another layer. Many have spent 15 years or more being told, quite reasonably, that education is the route to security. When the expected job does not appear, it is surprisingly easy for the conclusion to shift from 'the market is difficult' to 'perhaps the problem is me'.

Think of a young Arts graduate from a regional university. I will call her Nadeesha, although she is not one particular person. She represents many of the young people I could describe. She applies for dozens of jobs and hears back from very few.

At first she thinks: "The job market is very difficult right now." Then: "I'm not getting responses." Then: "Maybe my degree is useless." And finally: "Maybe I'm not good enough."

That slide matters. A shortage of opportunity has quietly turned into a judgement about her own worth.

And these beliefs do not appear from nowhere. We have often taught young people that the right answer comes from above, that results and titles matter enormously, and that security is something somebody else gives you. In an earlier column I wrote about capable professionals waiting for permission. Our graduates can find themselves doing exactly that - waiting for an appointment letter, waiting for the market to improve, waiting for the family to approve.

The 73,557 discouraged job seekers in the 2025 Labour Force Survey are not simply people who cannot be bothered. If you keep trying and nothing changes, discouragement is a very human response. My concern is what happens after that. Once somebody stops applying, learning, talking to people and looking around, it becomes much harder to use an opportunity when one finally does appear.

This is where psychology can help. It cannot create the missing jobs. But it can help a young person remain engaged, flexible and able to act rather than becoming completely stuck.

The pathway has changed

For generations, the expected route from education into work in Sri Lanka looked something like this:

Education - Qualification - Job - Career. It was relatively linear. You did your part and expected the system to do its part. Careers today are often much less tidy (see diagram above):

For somebody brought up expecting a clear route, this can feel very unsettling. But technology, global markets and economic change have altered the way many careers develop. Young people increasingly have to make decisions without all the information, recover from setbacks and sometimes change direction completely.

Career psychologists use the term career adaptability for the psychological resources people draw on to manage career tasks, transitions and setbacks. Savickas and Porfeli's research across 13 countries identifies four: concern for the future, control over one's choices, curiosity to explore, and confidence to act.

The research gives us useful language for this. But in my own work, I keep coming back to three very ordinary words: Clarity, Confidence and Courage.

Clarity - Confidence - Courage

I do not see these as three neat stages. In real life they feed each other. We need enough clarity to see a possible direction, enough confidence to believe we have something to offer, and enough courage to do something before we know exactly how it will turn out. Then what happens gives us new information, and we begin again.

Clarity: knowing where you can contribute

For me, clarity is not simply deciding what job you want. A degree tells us what somebody has studied. It does not tell us what they are naturally good at, what gives them energy, what matters to them, what sort of environment brings out their best, or where those things might be useful.

I think this is one area where Sri Lanka still has some catching up to do. In much of my international work, a good career conversation starts with the person - their strengths, interests and the value they might create. Here we have tended to start with the qualification. The right results. The right degree. The right title. Somewhere along the way, the person themselves can get lost.

The system does not make this easy. If your university subject is largely determined by a Z-score, and your family has quite strong ideas about which careers are respectable or secure, when exactly do you get to ask: What do I want? What am I good at? Too many young people know the title of their degree, but not yet their direction.

More than 15 years ago I developed a programme to help school students make career choices that were more personal to them - based on their interests, values and strengths. More than ten years later, many of those students still tell me that those early conversations gave them a clarity they might otherwise not have had. That matters to me.

I also remember talking to a family member in Sri Lanka about the career clarity work we were doing in Europe. They liked the idea, but were quite certain it would never work here. Parents, they said, would not want their children choosing careers that felt untested or unfamiliar. I understood the concern. Security matters. But I also remember thinking that we cannot keep deciding a young person's future entirely from what felt safe to the previous generation.

One conversation in Sri Lanka has stayed with me in particular. I was talking with a young person about strengths when they stopped me, genuinely surprised. It had never occurred to them that you could actually enjoy what you do and come away from work with more energy rather than less. Work, in their mind, was something you secured and then endured.

That told me a great deal. What gives us energy is often a clue to where our strengths sit. So one of the simplest questions I ask is: when do you lose track of time? What are you doing when you finish with more energy than you started with?

You can often spot a lack of clarity quite quickly. Someone applies for almost everything, whether it fits or not. They can tell you the name of their degree but struggle to explain what they are good at. They feel their only respectable options are a government post or leaving the country.

So instead of beginning with 'What job do you want?', I would start elsewhere. What are you good at, and what evidence do you have? What problems can you solve? For whom? What sort of environment brings out your best? What do you still need to learn? Where might you be useful?

I also ask people to take their degree apart. An Arts or Humanities degree is not simply a label. Inside it may be research, analysis, writing, argument, cultural understanding and bilingual or trilingual communication. Those abilities can travel into education, media, tourism, customer experience, policy, NGOs, HR and many private-sector roles. Sometimes clarity starts when we stop treating the degree as a job title and look at what the person can actually do.

Good psychometric assessment can help too, provided it is used ethically and as part of a proper conversation rather than as a label. Sometimes it simply gives a young person language for strengths and preferences they have felt but never been able to name.

Confidence: recognising and developing what you bring

Confidence, to me, is not bravado. It is being able to say, with some evidence, 'this is what I can do', while also knowing what you still need to learn.

Rejection wears people down. So does sending application after application and hearing nothing at all. Add family pressure, comparison with friends, weaker English or little interview experience, and a capable young person can begin the process already feeling behind.

Bandura's work on self-efficacy shows that one of the strongest ways we build belief in our own ability is through mastery experience: actually doing something and succeeding at it. We also learn from seeing people like ourselves succeed, from encouragement we trust, and from learning that anxiety does not necessarily mean we are incapable.

This is why experience matters so much. Internships, volunteering, projects, mentoring and honest feedback are not just CV fillers. They give a young person something much more important: evidence. I did this. I solved that. Somebody trusted me with this. I can contribute.

You can usually see when confidence has taken a knock. Somebody stops applying. Networking starts to feel unbearable. They dismiss things they have genuinely achieved while everybody else somehow looks more capable.

When things go wrong, most of us are very good at collecting evidence against ourselves. I often meet clients and students who tell me they are no good at something. So I ask them to tell me the story properly. What happened? What was difficult? What did you actually do? What did you have to overcome? When we put it down on paper, in black and white, they are often surprised - and sometimes rather pleased. Confidence has to come from what we have actually done. Full stop.

The questions are not complicated. What have I already done that I am proud of? What feedback have I received? When have other people relied on me? Who from a background like mine has found a route I could learn from? And what could I do this month that would give me one more piece of evidence?

I often suggest keeping an 'evidence log'. Nothing elaborate: tasks completed, problems solved, feedback received, skills used. When self-doubt arrives, you have facts to put beside it. It also happens to be very useful when you have to write an application or answer an interview question.

Courage: taking the next step without knowing the outcome

Courage is the part that asks us to move before we know the outcome. It might mean applying without meeting every criterion, asking someone for an introduction, trying a new technology, changing direction, or accepting a first role that is not quite what the family imagined.

Sometimes it means creating an opportunity rather than waiting for one. A private-sector role, a skilled trade, a start-up, a small business, tourism, IT or agri-business may feel risky when a government post has long represented safety. Even choosing to stay and build something in Sri Lanka can take courage.

For me, this is where courage and 'waiting for permission' meet. At some point we have to be willing to move without somebody else first telling us that it is safe to do so.

Career theory has a useful idea called 'planned happenstance': some of the most important opportunities are things we could not have planned in advance. The people who are more able to use them tend to stay curious, persistent and flexible, and are willing to take some sensible risks. In ordinary language: keep moving, keep looking, keep learning.

Artificial intelligence makes this even more important. Some of the entry-level tasks that once gave junior staff their first experience may increasingly be automated. Young professionals will need to learn how to use these tools in their own fields rather than simply fear them. At the same time, judgement, communication and the ability to build relationships matter more, not less.

Courage rarely looks dramatic. Often it is very ordinary: applying before you feel completely ready, trying a tool you might get wrong, taking a role whose title does not impress anybody, or asking rather than waiting to be chosen.

A couple of years ago I worked with a young Sri Lankan man who was very capable but had become stuck and was being overlooked for promotion. We went through his skills and experience and wrote them down. Then we practised how he could talk about the value he brought, whether for promotion or for another role that would stretch him.

At his next appraisal he did something different. Instead of simply waiting to hear what his manager thought of him, he talked about things he could see needed improving in the organisation and how he could help. His manager listened. A position was created for him to do exactly that.

I like that story because he did not suddenly become fearless. He became clearer about what he could offer, confident enough to say it, and courageous enough to put an idea on the table. Sometimes the question is not only, 'Where is the position?' but 'What could I create?'

I often bring courage down to one small question: what is the next thing I could do this week? Not next year. Not when everything is sorted. This week. What is the worst realistic outcome? Could I cope with it? What might I learn even if it does not work? Who could I ask for advice or an introduction?

One stretch action a week is enough to begin: an application, a conversation, a short course, a proposal. Each action gives us experience. And experience gives us something new to bring back to clarity and confidence.

This cannot be left to young people

But I do not want this to turn into yet another lecture to young people about resilience. If the economy cannot create enough opportunities, confidence and courage cannot manufacture jobs. Employers, universities, policymakers and families all have a part to play.

There are encouraging signs. The education reforms being rolled out from 2026 include a stronger vocational stream. In September 2026 the Asian Development Bank approved a US$100 million results-based loan to improve technical and vocational training and link it more closely to employer demand, with more than 100,000 young people expected to benefit. That is welcome. But training works best when people are also helped to choose, persist and adapt.

Employers can do some very practical things: create genuine entry-level jobs, internships and apprenticeships; recruit beyond Colombo; give useful feedback; and look for potential, attitude and transferable skills rather than polished English or a CV full of experience. I would also like to see fewer 'entry-level' job descriptions that sound as though the applicant should already have been doing the job for five years.

Universities can start these conversations much earlier. Career development should begin in the first year, not in the final semester when panic has already set in. Industry projects and community placements can be part of a degree. Students need help translating what they have studied into language an employer understands - and to see that one degree does not lead to only one kind of life.

Policymakers have the bigger task: job creation, stronger links between education and industry, and career guidance that is available in Sinhala and Tamil across the country, not only in Colombo. We also need better information about what actually happens to graduates from different universities, faculties and regions. Families and young people cannot make good choices in the dark.

Families may have the hardest part because our hopes for our children are so deeply felt. But perhaps we need to give young people more room to explore what they are good at without deciding in advance what success must look like. A private-sector role, a skilled trade or a small business can be a perfectly respectable beginning. A first job is just that - a beginning. And a young person's worth should never rise and fall with the state of the job market.

Clarity is not only for young people

I also do not think clarity belongs only to school leavers. Over three decades I have worked with people in their twenties, forties, fifties and beyond who have had to stop and ask, 'What now?' Careers change. People change. Life changes. For me, clarity is something we need to return to throughout our working lives.

A note to young Sri Lankans

If you are a graduate struggling to find work, there are three things I would want you to hear.

First, this is not all about you. You are trying to enter a genuinely difficult labour market. Finding it difficult is not evidence that you lack ability.

Second, there are still things you can influence. You cannot control how many jobs the economy creates. You can get clearer about what you bring, find ways to build evidence of what you can do, and take one manageable step rather than waiting for the whole path to become clear.

Third, ask for help. Talk to lecturers, alumni, mentors, career advisers and people already doing work that interests you. Most people are more willing to help than we imagine. And if the uncertainty is beginning to affect your sleep, mood or wellbeing, please talk to somebody you trust or to a qualified professional. Looking after yourself is not separate from building a career.

Where do we go from here?

Sri Lanka needs investment, economic growth and many more employment opportunities. Those things will take time. But that does not mean everybody else has to sit still until they arrive.

After more than three decades of doing this work, I have no doubt that the talent is here. Our young people are capable and qualified. What worries me is how many have had very little opportunity to discover what they are good at, where they might contribute, and how much more they are than the certificate they hold.

We cannot promise them certainty. I am not sure we should try. But we can help them find enough clarity to see a direction, enough confidence to recognise what they already bring, and enough courage to take the next step when the whole route is not yet visible.

Perhaps that leaves a very practical question for the rest of us: what can I do, this year, to help one young person become a little clearer, a little more confident, or a little more courageous?

Dr Chintha Dissanayake is a Chartered Occupational & Coaching Psychologist and founder of Oxford Psychometrics, Practitioner recognized by the Career Development Institute (UK), with over three decades of experience in talent and career development in Sri Lanka and internationally.

References

1. International Monetary Fund. "Graduating into Uncertainty." Finance & Development, September 2026.

2. Daily Mirror. "Sri Lanka tops IMF's Asia comparison with 43% graduate youth unemployment." 21 September 2026.

3. The Herald Business. Report on IMF graduate youth unemployment data, including India at about 42%. 22 September 2026.

4. Department of Census and Statistics, Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka Labour Force Survey Annual Report 2025.

5. World Bank Group. Press release on the new Sri Lanka Country Partnership Framework, 2 April 2026.

6. Daily Mirror. "World Bank Group targets 1mn jobs for youth with US $3.2bn financing and private capital push." 23 June 2026.

7. Central Bank of Sri Lanka. Quarterly Bulletin of Workers' Remittances and Labour Migration, Q4 2025.

8. Daily Mirror. "Unemployed graduates' protest." 3 June 2026.

9. Newswire. "Sajith questions government over promised jobs for unemployed graduates." 23 September 2026.

10. The Morning. Deputy Vocational Education Minister Nalin Hewage on youth unemployment and vocational education. 23 September 2026.

11. BBC News. "Sri Lanka declares all Wednesdays off to conserve energy." 17 March 2026.

12. Asian Development Bank. "ADB Approves $100 Million Loan to Boost Skills Development and Jobs for Youth in Sri Lanka." 30 September 2026.

13. Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191-215.

14. Mitchell, K. E., Levin, A. S., & Krumboltz, J. D. (1999). Planned happenstance: Constructing unexpected career opportunities. Journal of Counseling & Development, 77(2), 115-124.

15. Paul, K. I., & Moser, K. (2009). Unemployment impairs mental health: Meta-analyses. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 74(3), 264-282.

16. Savickas, M. L., & Porfeli, E. J. (2012). Career Adapt-Abilities Scale: Construction, reliability, and measurement equivalence across 13 countries. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(3), 661-673.

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