Now, the question is not “can you read or write?” Reading or writing is a normal thing any serious-minded person can do. Your peculiarities lie in how efficiently you can employ perfected IT tools in enhancing opportunities that abound.
Thus, the wind of Information Technology has given an apt answer to the question: why the drama in the labour market? The reality is: many who were hitherto relevant, have been rendered useless by their inability to adapt or upgrade to the changes IT has brought. This new technology, at present, determines the marketability or otherwise of individuals in the labour market.
Then, why are some youth unmarketable? Such can be attributed to a number of reasons. After all, any job one can do has got a machine which can do it better. So, that individual that can solve a full text of mathematics and prepare a cash book for a transaction involving the whole world, but cannot work favourably on Microsoft Excel as an accountant, does not have the chances of working in the bank. Of course, such a person cannot be debiting and crediting customers in the bank using analogue measures, can’t be efficient and might even tire out half way, if work becomes cumbersome. This explains why a bank will engage a graduate with second class, who has knowledge of EXCEL and not a first class graduate who can only read and write, but cannot function on the job.
The same has left some medical graduates with some discontent as to why computer scientists can easily be employed in a hospital to do some lab and text analysis, leaving medical laboratory scientists. This is not an act of favouritism as many would choose to call it, especially when one considers the fact that pertaining the sectors of sciences and medicine, it has been resounded by UNESCO that things like medical tests that are complicated are better analysed using machines and applications of basic IT gadgets, making hospitals need diversified intelligence and tactical improvisation that a laboratory scientist, without IT knowledge, can only work within his mental boarders and boundaries, but a computer scientist can employ already made intelligence through IT in handling such situations, having an edge over the one track-minded scientist. One may widen one’s chances in this era if one combines gotten knowledge with IT intelligence.
In the final analysis, knowledge of mere reading, writing or of “things in the books” without IT, will make you knowledgeable but unmarketable.