The prospects of this year's graduates are bleak. Credit: Liu Guanguan/China News Service via Getty Images
As someone who left university in 2010, I remember only too well the sheer exhaustion of starting a career in the aftermath of an economic shock. I approached exams with a sense of trepidation not for the academic gauntlet but for the abyss beyond. The jobs market brimmed with competition and employers were still holding in their belts after a dreadful year in which many went under.
Over and over, I felt the slow-motion gutpunch of realisation that an employer was never going to respond. Like many, I worked for free, drawing on savings from summer and university jobs from the previous year, to get my foot on a career ladder that wasn’t my first choice.
It hadn’t been until September 2009, 12 long months after Lehman Brothers’ collapse, that Gordon Brown announced his plan for youth unemployment. By that point, the damage had already been done. In the intervening year, youth unemployment rose at four times the average rate, putting an extra 157,000 18-24 year olds out of a job and leaving more than a quarter of a million unemployed for six months or more.
I was lucky, as it turned out. I caught a break, never suffered long-term unemployment and eventually found a career path that has been good to me. But for many of my contemporaries that career start took a toll that endured for many years. According to work by the Resolution Foundation, the generation that entered the labour market alongside me between 2008-11 took six years to make up their lost wages and graduates were 30% more likely to work in low wage jobs than students who left university before or after them.
Even worse effects were experienced after previous downturns. The cohort that entered the labour market during the mass unemployment of the early 1980s were earning between 13 and 21% less, on average, two decades later. A study of school leavers in the Netherlands in the 1990s found that delaying their entry into the job market by a year reduced their likelihood of finding a job in the following two years from 60% to 16% for men, and from 47% to 13% for women.
We cannot afford to be as lethargic about youth unemployment this time. As the latest ONS figures show, coronavirus may kill fewer young people than previous pandemics (peak mortality during the Spanish Flu was among 28-year-olds) but it has greater potential to sentence them to a life of lower earnings, worse jobs and weaker productivity. The downturn we are entering will be deeper than any other in living memory, and it may also be longer lasting. We must avoid long-term unemployment becoming a rite of passage for a generation.
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SubscribeAbove all let’s start training British people and employing them in place of importing cheap, or ready made foreign labour. Tax and reward should be geared to that goal. Decades of globalist so called socialist and and so called conservative governments have torn holes in our British cultural and economic life by not doing that. The needs of British people who love their country have been deliberately ignored in favour of globalist economics (mainly the introduction of social media, bits of useless plastic and other crap) when we should be building something solid that our own peoples can help construct to their benefit and enjoy long term. Let’s continue to work with global partners but let’s slow down and put Britons and British culture first. Brexit should be the start of that but I don’t see a man (Johnson) wishing to give an amnesty to 1m illegal migrants while doing nothing about further illegal and legal migration being the person for the job.
I agree 100%.
The sentiments I understand and to an extent I concur with – especially where national security is concerned, as, for example Huawei. But there is a point to international trade, which my economics master explained thus (age revealing anecdote) “Britain is very bad at producing avocados but very good at marine engines. So it makes economic sense to sell our marine engines to overseas, and buy their avocados.” The same still holds true, there is a real economic benefit in trade.
Admirable sentiments. Johnson’s form doesn’t look good, however don’t despair.
This Chinese Death Flu (CDF) catastrophe should prove to be the catalyst for a massive change in direction. Mr Cummings is the man to make it. He has precisely the maverick character, unapologetic and unorthodox approach to pull off the unthinkable. Fortunately he is the Puppet Master and Boris the amiable Puppet.
Let’s face it without CDF we would have continued in the same old stagnant rut. Hoovering up megatons of Chinese consumer crap, becoming endlessly obsessed with the bleating of adolescents like Greta Turdberg about Climate Change and other arrant nonsense. In fact ‘we’ have become a vacuous, self obsessed nation of morons who have completely lost the plot. Now we have a real chance for change, a Renaissance moment you might say.
You could start by insisting that all children learn the magnificent John of Gaunt speech, from Shakespeare’s Richard II Act II Scene I.
An excellent, if rather depressing piece Mr Tanner.
However I must disagree with the statement in the final paragraph that states, “where the focus has inevitably and rightly been on the mortality rates of older generations “.
Inevitably yes, rightly no!
Speaking as one the older generation it is almost beyond belief that the future of millions of the young have been in effect ‘sacrificed’ to save generation F (Fossils)!
‘We’ have had our time, hedonistically plundered the planet on an industrial scale, and already, as a result of so called medical advances, seen our lives needlessly prolonged beyond their ‘sell buy date’.
I know I speak for many of my generation who cannot comprehend why this is happening. I certainly have not encountered any of ‘us’ screaming for more, or using dreadful euphemisms such as “because I’m worth it” etc.
Historically we have never lived longer, but as the Ancient Greeks said “moderation in all things ” and that must includes life itself.
Vae victis.
Also speaking as someone who has had the best of life already, I really don’t want to live cowering and afraid to go out, which is what the governement appear to have in mind for us oldies.
If the lock down and constant social distancing is what is envisaged I would rather take my chance with Covid-19 as I think the odds of surviving that are better than being forced to stay isolated and without much human contact.
My brother, not in best of health and approaching 80 survived the appalling NHS treatment he was subjected to and has made a full recovery, since going into hospital in early April, though only to be discharged to a residential home while at the most invective stage of having the Corona virus. This was made all the worse by the refusal of GPs to visit residential care homes.
I tend to agree. and above all, it seems to me that many people today are almost hysterical about issues related to sickness and Death. And even in the countries with the worst mortality rates, most people over 70 survive the virus.
Beautifully and sanely put.
We need more grandmas and grandpas speaking out. As you said, a lot of them aren’t down with this shit.
Well said.
The point of difference with C19 is it’s occupational risk to healthcare staff. The shock factor of healthy young Italian clinicians coming down with SARSCov2 was what finally spurred health officials into action. The ‘save the vulnerable’ message was helpfully vague, translated by most of us to refer to sick and elderly. But it really applied to the health systems caught off-guard and unprepared.
The Asian nations’ successful response to C19 is a reflection of their experience and preparedness as a result of previous epidemics.
Likewise the downplaying of public mask use was at least partly motivated by the need to conserve supplies for the frontline health services. As the shortages ease we hear the experts changing their tune to guardedly endorse mask use in public.
In fairness to health systems and governments, preparedness is a costly and speculative business.
What is just as important is agility.
Thank you so much for that analysis, it would never have occurred to me that the NHS could be caught “off guard”.
I grew up in the era of ‘Emergency Ward 10’, Sir Lancelot Spratt and Matron Hattie Jacques;Thus to even think, let alone annunciate any criticism of the NHS, was a near Capital Offence.
However emboldened by your comment, may I venture to ask wether a behemoth the size of the NHS possesses the necessary agility you speak of?
Young people have made huge and largely forced sacrifices to protect the lives of people like me who, up till about forty years ago, would already have died in the ancient and natural way of things. Many of us, though not me personally, are enjoying very comfortable and secure incomes in what will be very long retirements. I would not be surprised if many of us feel as I do – very grateful and a little guilty. I wonder if some form of gratitude fund might not attract significant contributions to help along those young people who will be bearing the costs of this outbreak long after we are gone. Although a huge amount of compensation should be paid, but won’t, by China.
While a noble ideal your suggestions is very much akin to those who claim to pollsters that they would be prepared to pay more tax for ‘X’ but would never vote for the party offering to fund ‘X’ from higher tax!
Offering to pay more tax is something many people claim they want but few actually do. It is like those politicians and celebs, Yvette Cooper, Lily Allan and J K Rowling all spring to mind, who claim to want to provide a ‘refugee’ a safe home, and having first made a huge splash of this claim subsequently find ways to explain how it was just not possible for them to do what they claimed to want to do.
Anyway, I am not sure after Rash Rishi Sunak has got his claws in to people in a few months time, I am not sure many people will have any money left to make a voluntary payment into any fund. A levy on wealth is coming, including the family home! All dressed up as being an emergency measure that is necessary, notwithstanding that it is only necessary as Rishi and his crew panicked and started to throw money and a problem until they managed to make it a crisis.
‘A less expensive option would be for the Treasury to waive employers’ National Insurance contributions for younger workers.’
No, employer NI should be abolished for everyone. It is a tax on hiring people, utterly senseless and evil, along with more or less everything the state inflicts upon us.
That would discriminate against older workers though – both unfair and illegal (ie ageism). It would be constructive though for younger workers to have help to go into apprenticeships – as the country badly needs more people for jobs like electrician/plumber/etc.
The State should incentivise ‘death’. An man of seventy can expect to live to eighty, and thus receive about £100K by way of a State Pension.
If he was ‘rewarded’ with say £50K, (tax free) on or near his seventieth birthday, in exchange for “doing the decent thing”, as we used to say, both sides benefit substantially.
The State to tune of £50K, not to mention numerous other advantages, such as reduced pressure on the NHS, removal of reactionary political views etc.
The individual with an end of life cash bonanza, with which to placate avaricious grandchildren and other ‘worthy causes’.
We should start preparing now, for it is inevitable that something will have be done before “our angry and defrauded young ” go berserk.
That is one of the most filthy and abhorrent views I have ever heard since I first learned of Hitler’s death camps. Why have the cost of giving families a state bribe to ‘off” their elderly ‘loved ones’? Why not just round up everyone of pensionable age and transfer them in cattle-wagons to a State slaughterhouse? Job done! YOU CRIMINALLY-MINDED MONSTER.
On the face of it, that is one of the most filthy and abhorrent views I have ever heard since I first learned of Hitler’s death camps. But why have the cost of giving families a state bribe to ‘off” their elderly ‘loved ones’? Why not just round up everyone of pensionable age and transfer them in cattle-wagons to a State slaughterhouse? Job done! [irony] Or is this a perhaps misjudged attempt at Swiftian indignation?
On the face of it, that is one of the most filthy and abhorrent views I have ever heard since I first learned of H*t***’s death camps. But why have the cost of giving families a state bribe to ‘off” their elderly ‘loved ones’? Why not just round up everyone of pensionable age and transfer them in cattle-wagons to a State slaughterhouse? Job done! [irony] Or is this a perhaps misjudged attempt at Swiftian indignation?
Poor choice of adjectives, but a revealing rant. Thank you.
Perhaps ‘Free’ flights to Zurich might be offered in an attempt to alleviate distress in the Airline Industry.
One way or the other population control will have to be addressed, whether you like or not. Surely you have read your Malthus?
On the face of it, that is one of the most filthy and abhorrent views I have ever heard since I first learned of H*t***’s death camps. And why even incur the cost of giving families a state bribe to ‘off” their elderly ‘loved ones’? Why not just round up everyone of pensionable age and transfer them in cattle-wagons to a State slaughterhouse? Job done!
But are you really that ruthless and inhumane? Or is this a perhaps misjudged attempt at Swiftian indignation?
On the face of it, that is one of the most filthy and abhorrent views I have ever heard since I first learned of H*t***’s death camps. And why even incur the cost of giving families a state bribe to ‘off” their elderly ‘loved ones’? Why not just round up everyone of pensionable age and transfer them in cattle-wagons to a State slaughterhouse? Job done!
But are you really that ruthless and inhumane? Or is this a perhaps misjudged attempt at Swiftian indignation?
I wanted to reply with an explanation of why I voted you down. But ‘UnHerd’ won’t hear of it and keeps putting me on the ‘waiting to be approved’ queue – then dropping my comment.
I have always thought of you as sensible fellow worth taking seriously. I now realise I couldn’t have been more mistaken.
Yes agreed, too much Ouzo to celebrate the first Lockdown perhaps? Anyway it was seven months ago so I’m afraid I have forgotten the inspiration for such a provocative rant.
However in order to celebrate the inalienable right of an Englishman to say anything he damn well likes I do occasionally throw out something really ridiculous to gauge the reaction of the demos.
On this occasion it fell flat on its face, that is until your kind comment, thank you.
NI was set-up to fund the NHS, sickness and unemployment benefits and state pensions.
Even if you remove NI, these things still need to be paid for and in most countries, even those without government healthcare or pension systems, employers will still be paying contributions towards provision of those services and benefits.
Would you move those costs onto corporation tax? or directly onto the employee? ultimately they have to be paid for.
It seems to me that every generation complains that they’ve had it tough. I entered the jobs market in the spring of 1986 when yoof unemployment reached its peak under ‘Fatcher’. The Guardian always marks the anniversary with a picture of two rather gormless youngsters sitting on a fence in front of some cooling towers. Anyway, I had no problems finding a full- or part-time work during this period despite having no qualifications to speak of.
Moreover, it seems to me that as ‘digital natives’ today’s young people have all the advantages in terms of getting or creating exciting digital jobs that can be performed from anywhere.
And failing that, like this guy they can always start or join another sodding Think Tank that is of no use whatsoever and somebody – probably the long suffering tax payer – will fund it. That gives me an idea – Thomas The Think Tank Engine. It could be a fun, with a Fat Controller called Karen.
1986 was the most fortuitous time during the whole decade of the 1980s to enter the labour market. The ” Milk Round” was re-estabished as employers were taking on new graduates and school leavers . Those slightly older who had spent several years in the dole, or with intermittent employment records were treated with suspicion by employers
So wrong. From 1980 to 1987 I worked in a careers office in a town in the north west. During all those years we had hundreds of government funded 6 month placements, YTS. There was much churning of training scheme occupants by employers who clearly had a 100% subsidy. Young people had little choice but to join in this merry-go-round and suffered with low prospects of finding long term employment.
As it happens, my son just graduated and my daughter has one class to go. Great, two 2020 uni grads. I’m royally pissed that my kids and their peers will be paying the price for our batshit-crazy response to covid. I’m 63 years old and have no fear of the virus. What I fear is this dystopian world we’ve created to deal with it.
I am recently retired and in the ‘vulnerable group’, however, I and many of my peers, who I speak with regularly on the phone, would literally give up their lives for their children and grandchildren in order that they can live theirs. To me it seems absolutely morally wrong to sacrifice the whole future of a generation to keep a few like me alive. I sincerely believe that the vulnerable and elderly should lock themselves down if they choose to do so and if not should take their chances. Our young people could have got on with education, work, life and leisure, brought us necessities and checked on us regularly.
I agree with your second sentence, but there are too many vulnerable sub-groups: what of the obese, the BAME, the bald, et al.?
How about we guide those sub-groups step up and out of the high risk category? Speak with any good functional MD and they’ll tell you that main stream medicine is going about this all wrong. No one is addressing the root cause. And the elders are worse off because they’re nutrition is not designed to optimize health and their health care is being terribly mismanaged.
Everyone! Start looking around for a functional MD and you’ll quickly get to the bottom of why you’re in your risk group,,, and how to change it if you really want to.
I almost fully agree, but what about…. See my reply to Peter above
Perhaps it’s time to take a long, hard and icy-cold look at “The Dream” sold to the young, the last two or three generations: that only with some academic degree is one a valuable member of society.
Perhaps it’s time for employers, private and state sector, to abolish their demands of ‘academic credentials’ for every single job.
Mention was made of the apprenticeship scheme. Now that we are praising key workers, is it really so hard to get off the need to have a degree in beauty treatments’ for hairdressers and similar degrees?
Perhaps many young and even not-so you have found, during the lockdown, that they are good at something where they can use their hands and imagination, from tailoring to gardening, creating one-person businesses in their communities. That is where government could help, with reduction of all that red tape.
There’s a reason why even unto the last decade or so of the last century people were saying ‘oh, he (r she0 is an academic’, meant in a derogatory fashion …
And finally: can we please stop this narrative of ‘we the elderly have robbed our roof’. If I remember correctly, before we became ‘the elderly’ we cared for and supported and paid for our own children and grandchildren, robbing ourselves, if you wish, of buying goodies and consumer articles for ourselves. And unless the state demands a 100% Inheritance tax that which the much blamed elderly have acquired will go to the youth, won’t it.
It’d be great if young people with the right values and attitudes considered support work. In a charity which is in a university town and works mainly with learning disabilities but also people who may have additional mental health, autism etc and people needing really high levels of skill, we’ve had students working while studying in their university. A number too have ended up staying long-term – and ofcourse some will have developed and got more senior roles. social work and nurse learning disability/mental health have ofcourse gone on to get the necessary professional skills as well as management training and so become future managers too. It’s a job which may not make you rich but can give you a decent lifestyle as well as a job you want to get up for and really enjoy making a difference to people’s lives. So good if they did try it..but only if you care about people.
Some very important points in this article and there is a case to help unemployed youth to get into real jobs.
The only problem I have is right now there is no employment at all. These schemes will only work once we have jobs for people to go to and that means opening the economy.
“Unlike previous generations, today’s graduates leave university saddled with debt and with marginal tax rates of up to 51%.”——————unlike previous generations there are more opportunities to go to university. Most of us left school at 16 (even younger the generation before mine) and started work, then worked until they retired, often 50 years later in the case of men. Also most of the students leaving these days get free education as a huge proportion of student debt is never repaid.
You need for a start to remove the Neoliberal trend in macroeconomic policy. The essential thing underlying this, is to try to reduce the power of government and social forces that might exercise some power within the political economy”workers and others”and put the power primarily in the hands of those dominating in the markets.
That’s often the financial system, the banks, but also other elites. The idea of neoliberal economists and policymakers being that you don’t want the government getting too involved in macroeconomic policy. You don’t want them promoting too much employment because that might lead to a raise in wages and, in turn, to a reduction in the profit share of the national income. So, sure, this might increase inflation, but inflation is not really the key issue here.
The problem, in their view, is letting the central bank support other kinds of policies Instead, they want to put power in the hands of those who dominate the markets, often the financial elites.
Since the onslaught of neoliberal influence under Reagan and Thatcher, governments have come and gone, but the new language of governance has remained, creating a self-perpetuating mechanism. In the neoliberal regime, the concept of governance has contributed to putting decision-making power back into the hands of those who possess capital, and limiting the influence of government and of their regulatory agencies.
The economic model is not working but in changing it we have to look also at all the elements that neoliberalism has entrenched into our global society:
Everyone is going to suffer due to the government’s over reaction. The young are the most resilient with least commitments. Your case is not made – every group could make a similar case.
And the young will not have the opportunity to travel in the carefree way of previous generations. It will not only be the new entrants to the job market that will find it difficult, but also the newly redundant of all ages.
Because looking for ways to divide people never breeds resentment and has worked so well in the past?