Hidden away in all the smoke being generated by the Tories about the economy is the grim reality that youth unemployment remains scandalously high in Britain today. Nearly a million youth are officially on the dole, about 19% of the total. Felix Lighter reports on the grim future for youth under capitalism.
Hidden away in all the smoke being generated by the Tories about the economy is the grim reality that youth unemployment remains scandalously high in Britain today. Nearly a million youth are officially on the dole, about 19% of the total.
Data produced by researchers at Westminster reveal that if all the young unemployed were put in a straight line it would stretch from London to Edinburgh, a distance of 434 miles. Under-25s are four times more likely to be unemployed than older people.
On top of those must be added the hundreds of thousands of young people now stuck in low-paid, dead-end, full and part-time jobs for which many are seriously over-qualified.
Some of these jobs used to be done by students looking to supplement their income…but no longer. According to the NUS, the numbers of students in work have fallen from 41% in 2000 to just 27% today. So far as our youth are concerned it is now a case of: welcome to Barista Britain!
Prospects are not good. The Local Government Association has warned that a third of all young people will be jobless or “trapped” in under-employment by 2018 unless action is taken. Since 2005, an additional 730,000 youth have fallen into these categories. For those youth on the dole, long-term unemployment has become more and more of a factor. According to the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) a third of young people have been looking for a job for more than a year.
Is this just the result of the current economic crisis? No. The IPPR have also revealed research that shows that high youth unemployment was already a factor in the UK economy long before the events of 2007 set things tumbling. As they explain:
“…youth unemployment in the UK increased steadily relative to adult unemployment between 1989 to 2005, well before the recession. It shows that youth unemployment rose from one and a half times the adult rate in 1989, to more than three and a half times the adult rate in 2005” (www.ippr.org)
In other words, this is now part of the DNA of the capitalist system, boom or slump. As such, it is no good just hoping that things will get better in the future. Although some politicians have openly speculated about the social consequences (by which they mean riots, etc) of the situation, they are clearly either unwilling or unable to do anything about it.
The Labour and trade union movement must take action. A national campaign must be launched to expose the scandal of how young people are being treated. More than that, what are needed are socialist policies that will tackle the root cause of this problem: capitalism itself.
We say:
- A job or fully funded education for all
- No to low pay
- Nationalise the monopolies to create the jobs and take control of the economy
- For a socialist plan of production.
This is the way forward. To all youth we say: join us in this fight!
