Where have all the first jobs gone?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Guardian.
Today, where have all the first jobs gone?
Do you remember getting your first proper job? Maybe it was after school or graduating university. Chances are it felt like you'd taken your first step into proper adult life. For a lot of young people in Britain today, that moment just isn't coming.
It just feels like the odds keep getting stacked against us, against me, against my brother, against so many of my friends.
This is Hannah. She's 24.
I come from semi-low income, state educated.
What is the scale of the UK youth NEET crisis and who is affected?
I'm just an average person.
After years of hard work, she defied everyone's expectations and managed to get a bursary to Oxford University from her small rural town. She thought her future was secured.
I thought that was it. That was my life made effectively. I always thought I would go into some kind of international role, something civil service-y.
And everyone at university also told her that getting a job would now be easy.
The advice I got was that I should just apply for any of the FTSE list, apply for all of the top 100, see what happens. This particular fellow made statements like, well, you can all read and you can all write, so there'll be a job for you sort of thing.
So she sent off her applications. And then, nothing. For nearly two years, Hannah has been looking for a job.
One of the organisations, they told me, we've had 70 applicants for this role and we usually only get about five. I've applied for nearly 70 roles. I made a spreadsheet the other week and about 36 of them I've heard nothing and the other 30 have been automated rejections. It has been completely demoralising, quite almost dehumanising sometimes.
Hannah has become a NEET, a young person not in education, employment and training. Former government minister Alan Milburn released a report setting out the scale of this escalating crisis and calling for urgent action.
The scale and impact of this problem can no longer be ignored. We cannot throw a whole generation of young people on the scrap heap before their adult lives have properly begun.
And yesterday, Andy Burnham also promised to take action if he became prime minister.
I take very seriously the findings of the recent report. We need a complete rethink of how we support the next generation to succeed.
In the meantime, the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people are on hold. And the emotional and financial impact could leave long-term scars on a whole generation. From The Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly. Today on Focus, the UK's youth unemployment time bomb. Sammy Gedge-Soyler, you're a Guardian reporter and you've been doing some really great reporting on this huge and growing problem of NEETs. That's young people aged 16 to 24 who are not in employment, education or training. And there was this big government report out recently that exposed the scale of all of this. What were the key findings?
At the end of May, Adam Milburn released the first part of his report into youth unemployment and NEETs. The headline stat was 1 million 16 to 24 year olds are out of work, employment or training.
And how does that compare to previous generations?
A lot more unemployed young people now than there were previously.
While in 2005, four in 10 of those out of work or training had never had a job, that number now stands at six in 10. And the options for help have been reduced to the number of apprentices.
The last time that it dipped to similar levels was during the pandemic. And there's another really striking stat from University College London, which says that those who are persistently NEET in early adulthood are six times more likely to be out of work at age 51 compared to their non-NEET peers.
Oh, wow.
How did Hannah's experience illustrate barriers to getting a first job?
Yeah, it's quite stark. If you look across Europe, unemployment levels amongst young people did dip. But most other countries in Europe have managed to bounce back and their young people are now in employment. Whereas the UK has been an outlier and continued to see unemployment be prevalent amongst young people.
Wow. What are the factors that have made the UK so bad for young people trying to find jobs or training?
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:58
2
What is the scale of the UK youth NEET crisis and who is affected?
0:58–4:53
3
How did Hannah's experience illustrate barriers to getting a first job?
4:53–13:39
4
What do the Milburn report and statistics reveal about long-term risks?
13:39–25:43