ADEN, Yemen, May 6 (Xinhua) -- Every morning, Abdullah Al-Juhafy slides behind the wheel of a battered city bus and steers it through streets pocked with the scars of years of war. He holds a degree in civil engineering from Aden University. He is 27. He has never worked as an engineer.
"I thought driving the bus was a temporary job, but it seems permanent now," he said, eyes on the road ahead. "I didn't lose my ambition all at once. It faded gradually, with every closed door."
His story has become, in many ways, Yemen's story.
Unemployment remains extremely high in the war-ravaged country. Government estimates for 2026 put the overall rate between 56 and 70 percent. Among young people and university graduates, it is even higher.
More than 65 public and private universities continue to graduate students each year. Most of those graduates end up waiting for work.
The public sector, historically the backbone of stable employment in Yemen, has been effectively frozen since 2015. A government official at Aden's Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that meaningful recruitment had simply stopped.
"The war has effectively frozen hiring, leaving thousands of graduates standing still at the starting line," he said.
Even positions that do open, he added, no longer carry the appeal they once did. Salary payments arrive late, or not at all. A government job, long considered a mark of security in Yemeni society, can no longer be counted on to provide it.
For Al-Juhafy, this has changed how he sees his future. "In another country, a degree opens doors," he said. "But not here."
"The problem is not just the lack of jobs," he lamented. "Opportunities are limited, and many depend on connections, not qualifications."
Saleh Ali Abood grew up in a rural part of Taiz province. His mother sold her gold jewelry piece by piece to keep him in school. He graduated with a degree in finance. Three years later, he works between construction sites and small retail jobs. His mother is ill.
"She believed education would change everything," he said. "Now I cannot return even a small part of what she gave."
In a society where educated children are expected to become their families' financial anchors, the failure to find professional work carries a particular shame.
"There are expectations you cannot escape," he said. "You see them in your family's eyes. They thought you would be their support. Instead, you still have to rely on them."
Cut off from training programs and skills development, many graduates find themselves falling further behind as the global economy moves forward without them. Currency depreciation deepens their isolation; what little they earn buys less with each passing month.
"In Yemen, a graduate does not build a career," Abood said. "He waits on the margins of time, watching his knowledge slowly slip away."
Even when work is available, it often offers little stability.
Issa Salah, a nursing graduate, works shifts of up to 14 hours at a private medical facility, earning roughly 150,000 Yemeni rials a month, or about 100 U.S. dollars. After transportation and meals, he said, almost nothing remains. He has no health insurance. If he falls ill and cannot work, he does not get paid.
"It feels like I am working just to continue working," he said.
Four years after graduation, Salah has yet to land a stable job. He has begun, with some difficulty, to reconsider what his degree was worth.
"Sometimes I regret studying," he admitted. "Friends who left university early have built small businesses. Their lives are more stable." He paused. "I even think about asking them for a job."
The country's civil war, now in its second decade, has wiped out more than 250 billion U.S. dollars from an already fragile economy.
The United Nations estimates that more than 22 million people in Yemen will need humanitarian assistance in 2026, reflecting not only the fighting that has killed tens of thousands, but also the slow economic collapse that has followed.
For Yemen's educated young, the crisis is both material and existential. They are a generation suspended -- too credentialed to abandon their expectations, too constrained to fulfill them.
"I didn't give up my dreams in a single moment," Al-Juhafy said, navigating another pothole on Aden's deteriorating road. "Instead, I have traded them, little by little, for whatever keeps you going." ■
