http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/24/neets-number-climbs-record-high
Please read the article above about the alarming rate if unemployment in the UK. This article is about the number of young people who are NEET(not in education or training). This number has currently risen to 1.16m young people who are now not in employment or education. This is not only affecting young people across the nation it is affecting people everywhere in the UK.
The Guardian have a very interesting feature on their business news web page "UK unemployment since 1984". Please see link http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/interactive/2009/jun/22/unemployment-and-employment-statistics-recession. Which is an interactive feature that allows you to read an article about how the unemployment rates have been dropping at the beginning of the year. If you look at the graph on this feature and click on each point you are given a actual breakdown of what has been happening from 1984 to present. This follows three different areas represented from the key above "International Labour office measure", those claiming benefits and youth unemployment.
The graph demonstrates it is clear that the 80s were a period of high unemployment. Things slowly started to improve by the early 90s and then there was a slight increase in unemployment in the mid 90s again. However by 1997 onwards when Blair came to power the number of people in employment increased again. The general flow of employment looks pretty steady until 2008 where the rate of unemployment yet again starting rising. So what has gone wrong? I am not an economist so I am not going to go through patterns of why unemployment is happening however it seems apparent that the going effects of our current recession could be a possible cause. So what now?
One of the areas which has been badly affected is youth unemployment the number of those aged between 16 to 24 who are unemployed is over 1 million. It is very difficult to compete in a market where certain areas in our current market are not making any profit. So what do people need to do? The government will only allow individuals to seek unemployment benefit for 6 months. Finding a job is hard and I remember a young person "saying it feels like a job in itself" which to some degree it is. What needs to be assessed however is that after the 6 months what happens especially if you still haven't obtained a job.
As an adviser I was used to seeing many young unemployed people fed up of going to the job centre. Many of these young people were prepared to work anywhere but weren't always given adequate support. Once more some of them who had no or little qualifications didn't want to retrain for something new. The Apprenticeships scheme is something that excited many young people who were in this position but again the process of going through these schemes were not always popular with many young people. I did witness many people who didn't give up though and came regularly to the centre. An example of this was a young boy who was so determined to get on a catering apprenticeship who kept on and although he didn't get the apprenticeship he did obtain a catering job. Encouragement isn't something the UK media want to portray for young people. If people in education and employment don't encourage young people to seek employment who will. Yes times are hard but people must not give up.
There are so many fantastic opportunities out there it seems the media doesn't always focus on such things. I am not trying to sugar coat youth unemployment. Yes it is happening its true but making it more negative isn't helping other. We need to find ways to help and support this generation and so should the government.
Please see these videos below one is about the state of youth employment today by the BBC news last year. Showing how the government has almost ignored youth unemployment rates. The other video is made by a young person who is in employment himself and has spoke to others to find out their opinions. It's quite a positive and interesting video to watch because many young people are willing to work but experience and perhaps the benefit system is maybe letting them down. .
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