Hello and welcome to the COVID generation on the BBC World Service with me Ruth Alexander.

For the next hour I'll be talking to this year's school leavers and graduates who are hoping to enter the workforce,

only to find themselves standing on the brink of what's shaping up to be one of the longest and

deepest recessions in living memory.

How are they coping?

What's their plan be?

And what to experts advise?

Stay with us for the next 60 minutes to find out. First let's meet some of the reluctant members of

what we and some behind the scenes in governments are calling the COVID

generation.

Omar Halab is on the line from Lebanon.

He was in the final year of a social sciences degree

at University College London

when the coronavirus outbreak hit.

Omar, do you remember the moment when you realized you were not going to get to finish the final

year of your degree as planned?

I definitely recall little moments throughout the month of March. For instance, I would notice classmates first starting to come to uni wearing masks and then slowly some classmates started not wanting to come to

uni at all because they were scared. But I think the moment that I realized that the year was not going to carry on as

Plantis when emails started pouring in from employers saying that they were either

going to freeze the application process or cancel it

for the year overall.

Gosh, so there was a slow dawning realization and then a final very official moment where you could see, wow, that's it.

...