Economy Essay No. 3: Record one in five young people out of work

“Record one in five young people out of work”

By Tom Binder

While browsing the Internet for the most recent economical news bulletins, I stumbled upon the following article written by Elizabeth Judge:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article6836570.ece

I started reading the text because I really felt related to the content. The article briefly tells about the consequences the recession has on the younger people of our society, aged 16 to 24. Some of the facts made me quite worried. This is my review of the main issue published in this article.

In July the amount of unemployed youth, in the age group of 16 to 24, reached an all-time high record* of 947.000. This made the total number of unemployed British citizens reach 2.47 million. If you’d translate these numbers into percentages, you’d find out that this means that 19,5% of all people in that age group are looking for a job.

You can conclude that the recession has a major impact on the lives of the younger citizens of Britain. Elizabeth Judge, author of the article, even spoke of the possibly “lost generation”. Some people are afraid that because of the lack of work, the unemployed will turn into the unemployables. Martina Milburn, chief executive of the Prince’s Trust, even warns us that this generation could fall out of the system.

This all does not worry me as much as the following result does. I am not looking for a job at the moment because I am a full time student here at EF, so I do not need to compete on the job market. However, as a result of this shortage in job opportunities, more and more people attend college / university these days. This means that I will be having a harder time getting a placement at university, simply because there is more competition. Also, after I eventually finish my study at university, it will be harder for me to get a job because there will be more highly educated people, with the same degrees as I have, looking for jobs.

So even if the recession does not seem to harm me (being a teenager who wants to go study at an university) that much at the moment, I will eventually have to face the misery.

Are there any solutions to this problem? Some people say that we should no longer have a minimum wage for teenagers, so that it becomes more attractive to have them as your employee. This will allow more young people to be employed again. On the other hand though, this will mean that others will loose their jobs! So this will not be the solution we are looking for, not the solution that our society and economy are looking for…

This matter will be discussed a lot in the coming future and so it should be.

* Recordings started in 1992.