Issue 1: Youth 'Shut Out' from Employment

A Nasty Predicament, or Easily Solvable Equation?

By Kirith Ahluwalia

Many top news stories today focus on rising unemployment rates – specifically among the young 16-25 year old age range. But is this an issue that is a cause of youngsters with a definitive lack of experience, or is it simply that employers are asking for too much experience nowadays?

Employers constantly complain that young people do not have the skills or sufficient experience required to do the job properly, making them too expensive to hire as they then have to be properly trained by the company. While this is a viable argument, in other cases, employers might just be asking for too much.

Let’s think about this rationally, shall we? For 16 year olds who have just finished school, decide not to go to university but rather decide that they’d like to go into the retail industry and work their way up, sufficient experience in work is substantially a myth. Apart from the one-two weeks’ work experience some children undertake as part of the school education, these 16 year olds will not have gained any other experience from anywhere else. It’s impossible. Especially when you factor into the equation the fact that the national legal working age is indeed 16. Since Employers are really the only ones who can offer actual experience of a true working environment, surely they should understand that 16 year olds would have just gotten their National Insurance numbers, therefore meaning that they have only just gotten the opportunity to gain work experience. However, rather than encouraging young people to apply and try and gain experience, they offer roles demanding a minimum of one to two years’ experience in the field. Where would these 16 year olds have gotten that from?

Due to being unable to gain work and build up that one to two years’ worth of experience, the 20-25 year olds are also suffering from the unemployment epidemic. When employers are not offering forms of work experience, these 20-25 year olds and graduates will obviously be out of work. Instead of offering sufficient forms of training and experience, employers and The Work Foundation itself are pointing fingers at schools and the education system who should be focusing on trying to train these children for work. Surely our schools are doing enough? If not schools then at least universities are? Courses with sandwich placements and internship opportunities are available at most universities. At least schools have a work experience programme in place, the only other solution I can think of is that perhaps schools could extend those work experience placements. But would that be enough, and how much can schools extend this by? Certainly not by a year or two, what would happen to the future of education? We’d have a country of youngsters trained in the art of work but lacking the common sense and basic knowledge required for efficient work. Would it be a better work force without the education to support it?

Rhian Jones from the Private Equity Foundation effectively summed up the long term issue for young people in his report: “They will be less employable. They won’t have the skills that business needs...” and therefore they won’t gain employment. Once rejected from Employees, many of us don’t get second chances: “If at first you don’t succeed, you don’t succeed.”

For more on this issue, read Rhian Jones' full report: http://www.theworkfoundation.com/blog/755/If-at-first-you-dont-succeed-you-dont-succeed