Opportunities for jobs or use of ones talents do not just come to someone just because one is highly talented, knowledgeable or learned. Many have died with awesome talents and vast knowledge without having used them. Sad indeed!

Social mobility as a movement from one social position to another would mean that one may either move up or down the social scale. In today’s world, the mobility tends tend to be characterized more by a movement down scale. The talented, knowledgeable and learned are among the mass movement down scale. Social mobility tends to result more from structural changes rather than industrial success or economic developments.

According to Theodore C. Wagenaar of Miami University Ohio, in his book on sociology published by McGraw Hill publishers, the United States has long been an upwardly mobile society, primarily because of the dramatic rise in the labor market and in technological developments. He wrote that widespread immigration also has stimulated occupational advancement because immigrants usually may help to create more and better jobs. But according to Wagenaar, there has been widespread downward mobility in the United States, caused by deindustrialization, transformation of the economy from one based on manufacturing to one service.

He also observed that of the new service jobs are at low-wage end of the scale and that white-collar workers have been hurt by economic shifts, particularly in the face of massive corporate downsizing. It is so interesting to note, according to Wagenaar that today young Americans are the first American generation to experience widespread downward mobility, yet among this group are most talented, knowledgeable, and learned and aggressive persons! Wagenaar observed that to understand status attachment, one must take into account the structures of opportunity within which individual social action (i.e. occupational achievement) can occur.

In Africa, those who were first to take-up management positions in private sector, government, non-Governmental Organizations are known to have preserved job opportunities for their family members, friends and kinsmen. It is even particularly hard for the talented, knowledgeable and learned to be considered for jobs or even voluntary work with the NGOs. One talented and learned job hunter who went knocking at doors of some NGOs got similar responses that the employees of the NGOs were also looking for opportunities for their children, and if an opportunity was there, they would immediately hand them to them.

Many talented people, with no one to help them, and no finances would just wed their pillows crying. It is painful. And when the they seize an opportunity for a job, especially in the third world, they do not last. Other employees, including ones in senior management would become jealous and hostile to them. Though they are highly gifted, the talented are frustrated, are not given opportunities to further or explore their talents, and are not given opportunities for further training and time for self-development. And the talented would soon find themselves out of the companies or the public sector, dejected and demoralized. But who or what can come to their aid. Perhaps micro-finance institution may help them, but for a start, most of the talented in the third world may not even have what it take to qualify as a member of a micro-finance and be an effective member. It may help if more micro-finance and non-governmental organization that are transparent and that would target talented persons are created.