In the summer of 1978, a group of young Conservatives from Hendon answered an emergency call to meet near the Welsh Harp reservoir in North London. Although 100 were invited, less than 20 turned up, but they still contributed to arguably the most famous political campaign of all time, Saatchi & Saatchi’s Labour Isn’t Working.
It seems appropriate, even 30 years on, that the Tories used the young to act as an icon for Britain’s unemployed. There are now almost 2 million people out of work, one third of which are aged between 16 and 24.
The total rate of unemployment is set to hit 10 per cent by 2010. This could mean that by the start of next year, over one million young people will be without jobs. No shortage of extras for Saatchi then.
Last month, the MPC’s David Blanchflower, speaking at Stirling University, suggested several active fiscal measures to boost youth employment. If we don’t implement some or all of them, he argued, the pain of being young and jobless will “be a permanent scar, not a temporary blemish” on people.
One principal problem with the ONS’ statistics is how it records unemployment among young people. For example, although there are 800,000 economically active under 18 years of age, only 184,000 are officially unemployed.
This perhaps makes sense, as most of the rest are still at school. But these are individuals that will very shortly be entering the world of work to find there are very few available jobs.
So should we, as Blanchflower suggests, raise the school leaving age to 18? Should we encourage more people to enter higher education?
Ask any student what they think the word means and they’ll tell you: it means debt. As more and more qualified people enter a working environment with fewer jobs requiring degrees, competition increases and many end up losing out. Even those good enough to find work do so around £10,000 in the red.
More students are the last things this country needs. We need young apprentices, skilled labourers and business trained entrepreneurs. Only then do we stand a chance of working, not reading our way out of recession.
