Cognitive Dissonance From Kabiakou

There are no jobs, everyone sees it, but Kabiakou keeps saying that the mission for creating new jobs has been “over-fulfilled twice”.

Everyone knows that jobs remain the issue #1 in the country. Voters at the pickets of the opposition candidates speak about it, people discuss it in their kitchens. PM Kabiakou speaks about it at the session of the presidium of the Council of Ministers.

Every person can assess the situation in the country basing on their feelings, talking to their friends, neighbours, relatives. One can also listen to the radio or watch TV. It is strictly recommended not to do it simultaneously, as you will have a cognitive dissonance then.

The cognitive dissonance (Latin: cognitiо — “cognition” and dissonantia — “consonance, discordant, the lack of harmony”) — is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time; performs an action that is contradictory to one or more beliefs, ideas, or values; or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values. The concept was first introduced by Leon Festinger in 1957(Wikipedia)

There are no jobs. This concerns the regions, district or even regional centers, in the first place. Everyone sees it. And then, Andrei Kabiakou appears on TV screens and says that the mission for creating new jobs have been over-fulfilled twice. Yes, the situation is quite tense, but a little correction will do the trick and everything will be all plain sailing.

When I come across such discrepancies, I appeal to the official statistics. It’s not that I absolutely trust it, but it is possible to get at least some information from it.

So, here is the official statistical data from the website of the National Statistics Committee, the section “Labour and Wages”.

Questions come along at the spot. The annual mission for the government is to create 50 thousand new jobs. This means, 25 thousand in half a year. If Kabiakou says the mission has been over-fulfilled almost twice, a figure of 50 000 comes to my mind. Statistics informs about 14,5 thousand of newly employed people to the new working positions. How could it be so?

Kabiakou partially answers this himself. “To solve the employment issue, we need to create highly effective and demanded jobs, which the organizations really need and which would not become a burden for them later on,” — he says.

So what is happening here? Either Kabiakou was deceived by his subordinates (the Statistics Committee, besides, is also at hand as it is subordinated to the government), or the created jobs are in fact needless (which the PM indirectly confirms), or made just on paper.

The Belarusian Documentary Center has told the other day how this is done.

It turns out that enterprises are forced to post the information about non-existent vacancies, whereas in fact they don’t know what to do with the existing personnel. Are these fake vacancies the ones Kabiakou has reported about? The fact remains that less than 15 thousand people have been hired to the allegedly created 50 thousand jobs. The remaining 35 thousand jobs either do not exist or they are not wanted.

There is another important conclusion. If one subtracts the number of workers hired within half a year from the number of fired workers, with the deduction of the workers employed to the newly created jobs, it turns out that the economy has lost nearly 100 thousand jobs. Even if we presume that half of the jobs freed by the fired workers remain vacant and waiting for the lucky ones, 50 thousand jobs lost in a half a year – this is horrible!

To summarize, the current authorities remain incapable of creating even fifty thousand jobs, let alone one million. And, what is worse, they are incapable of creating elementary favourable conditions for those who can and should create these jobs.

Leu Marholin, naviny.by