Teresa Hunter: Our forgotten generation will have their work cut out

Published on Saturday 20 June 2009 14:46

AMID the jumble of unemployment data released last week two trends stood out. Unemployment in Scotland is rising at double the rate of the rest of the UK, and young people are suffering most.

True the overall unemployment rate showed some cause for satisfaction at 6.6 per cent, compared with the UK average of 7.2 per cent for the UK as a whole, and 8 per cent in London.

But it is the rate of deterioration which has to be a primary concern, not least given, for all we know, that the jobs backlash following the merger of Lloyds TSB and HBOS and the failure of Royal Bank of Scotland, may have yet hardly begun.

Even so in the three months to April, unemployment north of the Border rose by 1.5 per cent, compared with 0.7 per cent for the UK as a whole and 0.6 per cent in London.

It makes little sense to be too parochial when it comes to the scourge of redundancy, even if Scotland's jobless numbers are now rising faster than elsewhere in the UK. If you lose your job it is heartbreaking for you and your family, wherever you live.

Pity the poor West Midlanders who have been hit by a tidal wave of factory closures and where nearly one in ten is looking for work.

There were no big Government bailouts to save their jobs or pensions, which partly explains why Labour was obliterated throughout that region in the recent local elections. As one car worker on BBC1's Question Time told a Labour minister a few weeks ago: "You may have forgotten us, but we will never forget you."

But there is another forgotten generation we should be even more worried about, those leaving school and college. There are nearly 890,000 under 25 out of work, and this figure will rise to more than one million when this summer's out-take joins the workforce.

As a parent with children in the eye of this storm, I feel their plight acutely, and am ashamed at how we have failed them, or rather allowed our Governments and institutions to fail them.

Previous generations promised their children a better future than they could hope for. We were too busy having it all to give our own children that same priority.

Son number two graduated last summer, just as rigor mortis hit the jobs market. Fortunately he secured a training contract with a firm, which, with some adjustments, is managing to honour its commitment. Only a tiny number of his best-qualified and most motivated contemporaries from school or university found positions they are still in a year later.

His girlfriend, one of the most employable young people I have ever met, found a job in difficult circumstances in her chosen field, only to be made redundant after three months. By now, any hope of a job was out of the question, so she found an internship. For those not familiar with the term, it means the youngsters work for nothing, and has become the favoured means by which employers recruit school and college leavers.

Her family are farmers living in the middle of nowhere. To afford to work for nothing and live away from home, given the student debts she is already riddled with, she has to work all weekend at a department store to pay her rent.

Now don't get me wrong. She is thoroughly enjoying what she is doing, and always cheerful and upbeat. But it breaks my heart to even think about any youngster working long hours in an office desperately trying to make their mark all week, and then slaving through long shifts on Saturday and Sunday in a large and busy department store to be able to pay her rent. Though to be fair, it is not the department store paying slave wages.

Can this be what New Labour meant when it promised that things could only get better? As poor as many of our grandparents and great-grandparents were, I don't remember any of mine ever being forced to work seven days a week. The churches wouldn't have allowed it.

Most of my son's contemporaries though, simply gave up and went travelling. These will be arriving home shortly, to push this summer's leavers to the back of the jobs' queue.

They will be joined by next summer's glut, when unemployment will almost certainly still be rising. Prospects look hardly any brighter for those coming out in 2011.

Four years' leavers whose entry into the world of work will be a litany of disappointments and knocks, which could blight their careers for the rest of their lives.

I suspect the car workers won't be the only ones who will never forget today's shower of politicians of all parties.