Youth Unemployment: A Student’s Perspective

an article provided by Sam Curran, an Education Student at our Lancaster Campus

If you have wandered round a nondescript town centre dispensing as many CVs as you possibly can (for no reward) or looked on the Job Centre Plus site every day or even been forced to claim benefits then you will know all about the effects of recession. Whilst media coverage tends to focus on redundancy and lack of jobs for middle aged people it is actually the younger generation, those who are in-between the ages of 18-25 that are suffering the most.

Youth unemployment is at a record high and the number of people claiming Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) has risen by an incredible 100 per cent in some areas of the country. According to recent statistics the worst hit area is the North East (where I’m originally from) where the benefits claims of 18-25 year olds has risen a staggering 43 percent in the last year. Interestingly in the more affluent South East benefit applications have dropped 5.9 per cent. The situation is further compounded by the obvious fact that the government has to make cuts to try and stimulate economic growth and many benefits claims will either be rejected or reduced. How on earth will this benefit people of my generation?

However the effect of youth unemployment cannot just be gauged by simple statistics (although on average benefits applications have increased by 8 % across the UK in the last year), the effects seem even more pronounced when you look at each individual case. Take my situation for my example:

I’m an 18 year old student studying secondary teaching with maths at the Lancaster Campus at the University of Cumbria. In three years’ time I will graduate from my degree and have £25,000 debt to contend with. Will I have any kind of savings to fall back on whilst paying this debt? Not in the current economic climate I won’t. For the past two months I have been searching (fruitlessly) for a part-time job to boost my savings. I have put in over 200 job applications, given out so many CVs I must have covered every shop in the town centre twice and searched on the net for job vacancies and what do I have for my efforts…….. absolutely nothing! Most firms can’t even be bothered to reply and the ones that do trot out the vague phrase: “good candidate, but not enough retail experience”. How much experience do they want?!? For the record, I have had a proper temp job in the past and gone in every Saturday religiously to volunteer at Oxfam in my home town of Darlington. The fact is there is very little chance to get retail experience these days.

Perhaps I’m one of the lucky ones though. I have a loan to cover my living and tuition fee costs but what about when I leave Uni? £25,000 worth of debt and nothing to fall back on. What do I do then? Withdraw from the bank of Mum and Dad? Take out an overdraft? None of the options are desirable, especially when it is even harder to get a foot on the property market these days so it would seem I will be consigned to renting a house for the next decade with no realistic hope of actually ever owning my own house.

Some might say that I’ll be fine: I’ll be earning more than enough as a teacher and they are “paid far too much” anyway. Realistically though the starting wage of a teacher is £20,000 which sounds a lot but looks a lot less impressive when you take away bills and paying off my student loan. The fact is not getting a job now will harm me in the long term.

Some suggestions have been mooted by the government: they plan to make anyone unemployed carry out a six month “community work programme” for 30 hours each week. It is compulsory: anyone who refuses will have their benefits taken away. This would not solve the problem though: in fact it could exacerbate it if some people refuse to carry out these work placements.

So it seems I and a number of people of similar age are consigned to a period of unemployment and no chance of earning some extra cash. I’ve now got to the point where I’m doing surveys online to try and earn a little bit of money (although the most I can make is £40 per month). I’m also considering volunteering again at a charity shop although will that even look good on my CV to employers? In short, youth unemployment is a big problem and it doesn’t look like it is going away any time soon.