Kashmir’s unemployment problem is often framed as a shortage of vacancies. It is measured in exam notifications, application numbers, recruitment delays, and government posts per capita. But reducing the crisis to vacancy counts obscures a more unsettling truth. The Valley is not facing unemployment alone. It is facing a crisis of how work itself is understood, valued, and pursued.

Over time, we have constructed a narrow definition of what constitutes a “real job.” At the top of this hierarchy stand government positions – permanent, titled, secure. Beneath them lies a limited band of white-collar professions. Below that, stretching far wider than we admit, are small businesses, skilled trades, manual labour, and family enterprises. These forms of work sustain the local economy daily, yet socially they occupy a lower symbolic rank.

This hierarchy is rarely announced openly; It operates quietly – in casual remarks, in parental expectations, in marriage negotiations, in the language of social media, in the way we congratulate one achievement and merely tolerate another. “Get a real job,” is something we keep telling young people ,but What defines a real job?

The labourer who earns through physical effort, the baker who wakes before dawn to feed a neighbourhood, the fruit seller who builds trust, customer by customer – are these not real jobs? Are these not economic actors in the most fundamental sense?

They generate value. They circulate money. They sustain households. Yet in collective imagination, dignity remains disproportionately tied to titles,credentials ,and white collar status rather than to productive contribution. This distortion is not accidental. It has been historically reinforced by structural realities. For decades, the government functioned as the most stable employer in a region marked by political uncertainty and limited private investment. Public employment offered security where markets fluctuated. Stability became aspiration, aspiration hardened into prestige. Prestige evolved into dependency.

As a result, a significant portion of educated youth now........

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