By John Knox
There has been a lot of hand-wringing about the dreadful fact that 88,000 young people in Scotland are unemployed, a third of total unemployment and a fifth of all young people between the ages of 19 and 24. It is the worst figure since records began in 1992.
Yes, there are ministerial meetings, strategies, apprenticeships, training programmes, guarantees, contracts – everything but the jobs themselves. There is talk of another “lost generation”, like the one in the early 1980s when heavy industry collapsed.
So what are the solutions? Getting the economy growing again would be useful – though there is little sign of that for the next two years. Stopping the public sector cuts would be handy – though there is even less sign of that, with the UK government holding to the remnants of Plan A and the unions refusing to take further wage freezes or wage cuts to preserve jobs.
A third solution might be to encourage older people to leave the workforce and retire early. Over 60 per cent of 50-to-64 year-olds are in employment in Scotland. Many of them could afford to retire early or go part-time and leave the way clear for younger people to start their careers. Employers could be given an incentive to take on younger people by cutting National Insurance contributions for those under 25 and increasing them for those over 55.
And it need not mean older workers being “dumped on the scrap heap”, as many of them like to put it. They have the experience and the confidence to start their own businesses. Their families are becoming less dependent on them, so they need not earn as much as a younger person. And, if they have a pension to live on, they can turn to voluntary work.
These may be difficult changes for the contented elite in the workforce, but it is a measure of their selfishness that they have so far refused to discuss them. Instead, they talk of “age discrimination” against themselves, rather than the age discrimination they are handing out to the younger generation. Instead, they talk about the need for the politicians or business leaders – or somebody else – to do something about finding a job for their sons and daughters.
And instead, of course, they look around for someone to blame – cheap labour in China, cheap labour from Eastern Europe, and even the fecklessness of their own children. For the record, net immigration to Scotland is running at around 20,000 a year and half of them are students coming to university here. So keen, hard-working, language-skilled Poles, Latvians, Estonians, Croatian, Czechs etc only take one-eighth of the number of jobs needed. And in return, Scots have the right to work anywhere else in Europe – if they have the language skills.
The politicians find themselves pleasing the contented majority of voters (young people do not vote very much, and more fool them), so they too refuse to contemplate the difficult issues of cutting wages or raising taxes to avoid job cuts or rebalancing the labour market to favour younger people. Instead, they make a play of tackling youth unemployment with a whole list of small measures which do not cost much or upset the apple-cart.
The UK government’s Youth Contract costs £1 billion in wage subsides, apprenticeships and retraining, but will help fewer than half of those unemployed and will be temporary. The Scottish government is creating 25,000 apprenticeships and a training or learning place for every 16–19 year old. Local councils and large companies are making token gestures: 50 apprenticeships here (Edinburgh council), 1,000 graduate job-subsidies there (Glasgow council). Firms such as Standard Life and SSE are creating a handful of apprenticeships and mentoring places.
None of these schemes, however, create permanent jobs, which is the fundamental problem. What is needed is a halt to job cuts in public services and a stimulus for the private sector to begin creating jobs in industries such as construction, energy, bio-science, social care, sport and the arts.
No one disputes that more jobs are needed, though there are many arguments about the numbers required. Some say youth unemployment is not as bad as in the early 1980s when fewer people went to university and college. Others, for instance the Scottish Trades Union Congress, say the real unemployment figure is double the official 231,000 when part-time working and under-employment are taken into account. The Scottish Chambers of Commerce say 50,000 jobs were created in the private sector last year – but the number of people in work is falling. It fell by 8,000 in the three months to November alone.
Whatever the numbers, each unemployed young person is a tragedy. After struggling through school and then college or university and to emerge into a world which does not want your skills and energy must be completely disheartening. Back in the 1970s when I was emerging, half-formed, from the education system, one could find work within days and a career within months. Now I meet graduates, with degrees I could never aspire to, living frugally at home for months, writing job applications which never even get a reply.
Earlier this week I came across a group of students and recent graduates standing by a roaring log fire on the edge of a loch. They were all volunteers, helping to care for a wildlife reserve and hoping it would one day lead to a job. As the afternoon sun died away, we quietly watched the immature swans sliding on the ice, trying to keep their feet – and I wondered how they, like the students, would survive the weary winter.
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