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need advice on jobs and education?

I've been unemployed for three years now, three long and crushingly depressive years. I graduated just before the financial crisis with a double degree in International Business and Economics, and have been stuck in limbo ever since. Whenever I apply to a basic office/business job I'm told that I'm "overqualified". However these are basically the only jobs I can apply to where I live, without these I have nothing: all jobs related to Economics require at least a Masters degree and all jobs related to International Business either require a vocational degree in expediting or a degree in Marketing. The range of jobs my university suggested I could get with my degrees simply do not exist. I have unsuccessfully applied to non-business related jobs too: window cleaner, garden worker etc. I would not mind moving to another country to get a job, but moving requires a lot of money, which I don't have, consequently this is not a realistic option. I can't do internships either where I live, if I want to do an internship with a company I have to go through my government - only they can grant me an internship. I would not qualify for it since in their eyes: a degree = a job. They don't think I actually need one, even after being unemployed for three years ! One option I have is to is to get government-sponsored training as a welder, machinist or similar. I would be very happy to do this kind of work too, but getting government approval is very difficult, only few are selected for them even though these are jobs that are in high demand in the job market. Where I live the companies do not offer apprenticeships unless they are government-sponsored. However in a years' time I should be able to scrape up enough money, from helping relatives with basic chores, to study for another year. My idea is to either take a one-year Masters in Economics at a nearby university, or switch "career" completely and study web development for a year. I hold an old diploma in programming (VB, C, Java) and have done a few courses in xhtml,css and JavaScript. I enjoyed the courses I took and thought that programming was very challenging, in a positive way. Right now I feel that studying business/economics was a huge mistake, it seemed promising at the time but now it only feels like a dead-end. In contrast there are quite a lot of jobs in web development where I live and I think I would be good at it. I'm looking for some advice on this since I just don't know anymore, all the decisions I make seem to be wrong. So, should I switch from Economics to Web Development and hopefully get a decent chance to find a job ?

Public Comments

1. yes, i recommend you do the web training course. don't be depressed and look back at the bad things that have happened because life is too short for that sh!t. one thing you must remember is not to make a same mistake twice in life. learn from your previous failures and look for ways to evade similar forthcoming situations in the future. so plan ahead with the web development degree. i feel for you man but theres f!ck all that can be done. plan ahead, be a visionary, do want you want to do. i am 17 and have been told by older friends and relatives that business isnt a very good area to be studying at the moment because too many people are. so the bottom line is that i suggest you do the IT degree because you enjoy it. the web is growing more and more and the job opportunities are endless if you know what you're doing and have the right qualifications. just work as hard as you can with the new degree switch, make sure you know it all very wellso you can get a high paid job when your done. so good luck with whatever you do. peace