Youth Unemployment: Business chiefs urge firms to play a part
Nov 24 2009 by Evening Gazette
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LAST week’s headlines screamed nearly a million young jobless - almost one in five young people out of work.
The true picture is much, much worse.
While the Department of Work and Pensions was busy announcing a raft of measures to counter the crude figure of youth unemployment, another released quietly by their colleagues at the Department for Children, Schools and Families down the road revealed that the numbers of 16 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training - the group now saddled with the label NEET - had already risen to 1.08m.
Worryingly, the North-east has more NEETs as a percentage of its young population than anywhere else in the UK.
The acronym matters because it stands not so much for a statistic as a state of mind - and one that could trap thousands of young people on Teesside into a life without work.
Big Issue panellist Bob Cuffe summed it up.
"The postcode of birth is of greater significance than it was when we were young," he told fellow panellists at the first Big Issue debate on youth unemployment hosted by Teesside University and the Institute of Directors.
"The opportunities if you were born in Yarm compared to if you were born in Grove Hill now compared to 20, 30 or 40 years ago means it’s more difficult for young people growing up in a challenged area (to find work)."
His comments echo a growing disillusionment among the ranks of the Labour Party that its own policies may have - albeit it unwittingly - filled in the very escape tunnels that allowed a young lad like Alan Milburn, born on a rough housing estate in Newcastle, to rise to the front benches of government.
Social mobility is more restricted than it has ever been and the gap between the working "rich" and the jobless poor is growing.
For most individuals and business that means a greater proportion of taxes paid by the gainfully employed go on supporting the gainfully unemployed, while for industries like the process sector with a large constituency on Teesside constantly warning of a skills shortage, it’s a shameful irony that many of the young people it could be training for better-than-average pay are living on the dole on housing estates on its doorstep.
Geoff Longstaff, one of Teesside’s self-made entrepreneurs, the son of a labourer from the Brambles Farm estate, now works with young people facing similar challenges to the ones he confronted as a kid.
Like many of his fellow panellists, he believes that releasing private enterprise to help tackle youth unemployment could have a dramatic effect on both the economy and thousands of young lives, while "warehousing" teenagers in colleges and universities until the recession blows over will do nothing to address the fundamental problem of job creation.
He is among those highly critical of schemes such as the Government’s Future Jobs Fund which aims to spend £1bn creating 150,000 places for 18 to 24-year-olds.
Many believe such initiatives, potentially worth several thousand pounds to an employer but tying them up in hours of form filling and with unrealistically high expectations - in this case creating at least 30 new jobs per application - act as a bureaucratic cosh, dulling enthusiasm among SMEs who would otherwise be keen to help society grapple with the big issues of the day.
Mr Longstaff said recession was a time of opportunity, but the red tape needed to be lifted to allow firms to make the most of it.
Preston Park-based business coach Ian Kinnery agreed. "Some of these schemes are well intentioned," he said, "but you have to be a Philadelphia lawyer to find your way through the treacle. Those people who are a Philadelphia lawyer or can afford to employ one can take advantage of the scheme - that might be community enterprises, public bodies or large employers."
But what he described as the "engine in the middle" - the small to medium sized businesses employing between five and 30 people - didn’t have the "inclination, skills or certainly the time to study the small print to find their way through the red tape and to make these things work for them".
He said that while there was significant help for the start-up, "someone going from employment to creating their own business is not going to affect the overall employment figure. But in the middle, if they could employ just one or two more people that would drastically change the numbers" - what Bob Cuffe described as a "take one on" policy for small firms.
With the psychologically significant figure of 1m young jobless already breached, stoking fears of a new "lost generation", increasingly radical solutions are being put forward by business to tackle a looming mountain of unfulfilled ambition.
The CBI wants a reduction in the minimum wage, the Federation of Small Businesses has called for a National Insurance holiday for new recruits, while one senior economist and former Bank of England rate setter wants NI removed altogether for the under-25s.
But according to Michael Jones, business unit manager with Darchem at Stillington, the answer lies largely in the hands of business people themselves.
A governor for two local schools, Mr Jones also co-ordinates the firm’s work with the local education authority and says while firms face many barriers in working with young people, it was imperative they do so. He said businesses could help prepare young people for the changes from school to work and help provide skills beyond the vocational.
"If people do not believe there is a future, they will move away from trying to secure employment and training. If we do not (get involved) we’ll be facing a fourth generation of unemployed."
:: Click here to have your say on this issue ::
:: BBC Radio 4 You & Yours programme today has an open mic debate for employers, parents and young people facing the problems created by youth unemployment.
Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours.
The Big Issue debates are supported by the Evening Gazette, the Tees Valley Institute of Directors, and Teesside University.
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