Alistair Darling wants to ‘lead the young back to work’ in tomorrows budget, with incentives for re-training and re-skilling. But with career prospects and job opportunities looking worse as the recession deepens, it will be young people who will suffer the most in the tough economic climate.
Many Young Fabian members may have an undergraduate degree, or like me may be taking post-graduate qualifications to boost their employability, but for the thousands of new graduates leaving university in a couple of months, the employment opportunities that were available only a few years ago are disappearing fast.
Companies that are looking for new staff (and many are not) will be overwhelmed with quality applications from people with experience, knowledge and qualifications to match. Recent graduates and those in entry-level jobs will find it more difficult than ever to push forward with their careers and may decide to stay-put on a lower salary until the recovery starts. Anecdotally, after advertising recently for an intern in my office I received three applications from PhD students who were struggling to find employment which utilised their skills.
But this is not all doom and gloom, it offers Alistair Darling a real opportunity to make lasting changes to the prospects of young people in the UK economy and to release their potential rather than stifle it.
Young people are more likely than any generation before them to volunteer and offer their time to community causes and activities. This should be built upon by Labour and new incentives and rewards should be offered to young people to get involved with rewarding projects in their communities if paid employment is not always an option. Practical and essential skills and experience can be built up through volunteering at a charity shop or in a community project involving financial management skills and other soft skills like communication and presentation which employers are quick to pick up.
But the downturn must not be an excuse for pushing young people out of the classroom and into the job market. Education and training continues to offer a strong route to success for young people – across the board, from accounting to bricklaying – and should not be seen by Government as expendable. The Tories promises to slash public spending smack of knee-jerk reaction to a long-term problem. The most damaging thing government could do in the current climate would be to pull-back from funding projects like Building Schools for the Future, educational maintenance allowances, Train to Gain and other investments in education for young people. Now is the time to invest in future generations, not cut them adrift.
If you want to have your say on how the Government should respond to the recession, why not attend the Young Fabian seminar with Treasury Minister Stephen Timms on 6th May?
Or if you can’t make it and want to ask a question, then post it here as a comment and we’ll make sure it gets raised.
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Yes, he was once a Young Fabian Executive Member, and I can now exclusively confirm that he’ll be coming to address the Young Fabians at the Fabian Society New Year Conference on Saturday 16th January.
Young Fabian Consultation on ‘The Milburn Review of Social Mobility’
