UK NEWS

JOB CRISIS: THE TRUTH ABOUT BRITAIN'S LOST DOCTORS, NURSES, TEACHERS AND PLUMBERS

CRISIS: Youngsters need to be found jobs

Tuesday February 9,2010

By Sarah O'Grady, Social Affairs Correspondent for Express.co.uk

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BRITAIN is set to miss out on 19,500 doctors and nurses, 62,000 teachers and 1,500 plumbers unless urgent action is taken to get young people into work, a hard-hitting report warns.

The country could also lose 93,000 potential entrepreneurs, 16,000 mechanics and 31,000 social workers if youngsters are not found training or jobs, said one of the largest studies of young people not in employment, education or training (Neets).

The Prince’s Trust and Citi Foundation research, based on interviews with 1,046 16-24-year-old Neets, suggests that while the majority of young people want to work the daily struggles they face make it harder to find a job.

Two fifths (40 per cent) of the Neets asked said they do not have enough money to buy smart clothes for job interviews.

Martina Milburn, chief executive, youth charity The Prince’s Trust said: “Every one of Britain’s unemployed young people has skills and talents that could make a real difference to this country. Only by investing in young people can we ensure this undiscovered generation isn’t lost forever.

“We cannot afford to stifle young talent. We must invest in young people now, giving them all the chance to achieve their ambitions and become the key workers of the future. Youth unemployment already costs the state £3.5m each day in Jobseekers’ Allowance.”

A ‘lost generation’ of young people who are not in work or training has grown to more than one million for the first time.

Almost one in five school-leavers aged 16 to 24 are not in education, employment or training with many living on benefits.

Their numbers have risen to 1.08million, the highest total on record, prompting claims the Government is failing to do enough to help young people whose lives are being blighted by the recession.

Conservative universities spokesman David Willetts said: ‘This is a damning indictment of the Government’s failure to help young people during the recession. The number of young people neither earning nor learning is increasing at a rate of more than 9,000 a week.”

Long-term unemployed young people are significantly less optimistic than those who have been unemployed for less than six months, according to the report.

Those out of work for more than 12 months are nearly twice as likely to fear that they “will never amount to anything”, and three times as likely to believe that they don’t have any skills or talents. Forty per cent of long-term unemployed young people don’t feel hopeful about finding a job in the next six months.

More than a quarter (27 per cent) of NEET’s fear they will get into so much debt that they will lose everything, while 57 per cent worry they will never be able to afford their own home.

DOES SOMETHING NEED TO BE DONE TO GET YOUNGSTERS BACK TO WORK?

JOIN THE DEBATE: HAVE YOUR SAY

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LOST GENERATION

09.02.10, 11:00pm

These kids don't have any chance of making anything with themselves ever unless they have a bedrock of privilege to catapult them out of the mess. The west is in terminal decline & the kids should be told the truth that the previous (baby boomer) generation stole their future & inheritance & sold them out!

• Posted by: remoteviewer • Report Comment

HOW CAN THE STUDENTS....

09.02.10, 7:16pm

...leaving school become teachers, doctors nurses etc, they are practically illiterate. Maybe we should do as they do in Europe, when they leave school, if they don't have a job they have to do three years at a technical school to get a qualification

• Posted by: Disgruntled • Report Comment

HANG ABOUT JONOSYNIC 9.

09.02.10, 5:05pm

You are tarring with the same brush, not all our youth are lazy yobbo's, I live in the City centre in a rough old area. We have the obvious problems but we also have a large number of clean .sport practiceing youths who get up early in the week and go to work on the buildings, teaching in schools and Colleges, plumbers, drivers, electricians, Engineers. Home at weekend to play Sport, help their families with home chores, in fact the Yob element is diminishing slightly in this area at least, let's say it as it is and not generalise.

• Posted by: dunnit • Report Comment

THE POOR DEARS

09.02.10, 3:52pm

Perhaps if they sold off their x-box/play station and SOTA mobile phone then they could afford a suit to go to interviews. The only trouble is that they might actually have to WORK!!!!!
Very few youngsters are prepared to start at the bottom and work their way up, they just expect to go in at the top because they are so used to having everything handed to them on a plate.

• Posted by: jonocynic9 • Report Comment