I haven't been in such situation, but my good friends was, and what he did fits what you wrote: He grew up in a city with 50% unemployment. After he realized h

I haven't been in such situation, but my good friends was, and what he did fits what you wrote: He grew up in a city with 50% unemployment. After he realized he has no future there, he left. Just bought a ticket to a larger city, and then applied to companies there until he found one that took him. (His friends from the original city keep meeting in local pubs and dreaming about how one day they will somehow get lucky. They haven't.) At his first job they abused his inexperience, paid him about half the market price, and as he kept learning new things, they gave him more difficult work, without increasing his salary. But the work still paid bill for living in the city, he learned a lot of stuff, and then one day he left for another job that paid several times more.