Youth Unemployment Hits 1 Million
This iconic number is all over the newspapers and wider media. It is important to remember that a sizeable part of this number represents students looking for work and studying however we mustn’t underestimate the scale of the issue. I trailed the work I am doing to seek to pilot a project in Lincolnshire and North Notts which will tackle the issue of youth unemployment and out-migration in one rural area by building the portfolio working and self employment skills of a group of young people.
At the nub of this scheme and perhaps something for us to think about more widely in the context of rural sustainability and the stalling of the growth agenda, is moving a focus onto cooperative and innovative models of local cooperation and employment based on local opportunities rather than expecting everyone can go down the traditional career route. A route which is rapidly disappearing in the current economic climate and which in any case has denuded many rural areas of their young people.
The article itself tells us: “Youth unemployment has broken through the 1 million mark to a record high and theUK’s wider unemployment rate has climbed to a 15-year high. The government sought to blame the deterioration in the jobs market on pressures from the eurozone debt crisis but came under attack for ignoring problems at home Fears that young people are bearing the brunt of Britain’s economic slowdown were underscored by official figures showing there were 1.02 million unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds between July and September. One in five young people are now out of work.”