Underemployment & precarité: the new condition of youth? Prof. Robert MacDonald Social Futures Institute Teesside University, UK R.MacDonald@tees.ac.uk @RFMacDonald (twitter)
Hard times for European youth Youth in transition to labour market worst hit by 2008+ global economic crisis 5.7 million young people unemployed (November 2013): 23.6% Twice overall rate in EU28 (of 10.9%) (Eurostat 2014) Youth unemployment costs EU 150b pa (Reuters, 2013) Spain 57.7% v. Germany 7.5% [UK 20.5%]
The return of the lost generation UK youth unemployment/ NEET Bad for young people, bad for society, bad for economy c. 160k life-time cost to economy for every person NEET i.e. c. 34 billion for those people NEET in 2008! (Coles et al, 2010) Still c. 900k 16-24s NEET Tackling NEET problem = central to youth policy/ practice across recent governments, for years
The NEET orthodoxy Government (& academic/ policy/ practice?) orthodoxy = Low aspiration & low skill youth unemployment/ NEET NEET solved by participation in education/ training Up-skilling = necessary Numbers of low-skilled jobs will drastically More high skilled workers (e.g. graduates) needed for the current/ coming high-skill, information economy
4 long-term studies of youth transitions & social exclusion Over 15 years... In some of poorest neighbourhoods in England (Teesside, NE England) 186 white, working-class hard to reach young adults Qualitative, in-depth, wide-ranging, longitudinal interviews highlights the dynamism, complexity & precariousness of labour market experiences... welfare to work & youth participation (in education, training, jobs) does NOT solve unemployment or social exclusion
Underemployment as work insecurity: the Teesside studies Unemployment = common & recurrent for all but so was (low paid) employment Long-term post-school transitions, into 30s = insecure & non-progressive age 16-18: School-youth trainingunemployment-job / age 18-26: job unemployment-fe -unemployment-new Deal / age 26-36: unemployment-jobunemployment-new Deal-unemployment... Long-term churning, underemployment
An example: Richard, 30 I just want something with a bit of job security - where maybes I can buy me own house in the future rather than just where you ve got to be on a wing and a prayer type thing just a job that I can call me own, you know what I mean? Rather than just looking for one all the time or just jumping from job to job. Since age 16: 15 episodes of unemployment 5 training schemes 9 jobs (longest 18 months), now via emp. agencies highest pay 7.50 ph, usually 5.50 ph. poor & deeply in debt accrued whilst signed off doing short-term agency jobs (loss of benefits)
Non-university post-16 routes often = vague, muddled, little value (Wolf, 2011: 82) Young people.. are being deceived The staple offer for between a quarter and a third of the post-16 cohort is a diet of low-level vocational qualifications, most of which have little to no labour market value. Among 16 to 19 year olds at least 350,000 get little to no benefit from the post-16 education system (Wolf, 2011: 7)
The myth of the high skills economy Government said numbers of jobs requiring no/ low qualifications in 2020 = 600,000 (Gordon Brown, 2006) BUT this a fundamental government misunderstanding of employers' demand for qualifications among young people (The Guardian 2 nd February 2010) Leitch Report (2006) actually said numbers of people with no/ low qualifications in 2020 = 600,000 But numbers of jobs requiring no qualifications will remain at around 7.4 million in 2020 (IPPR, 2010) Massive over-supply of well-qualified workers, but weak demand from employers & low paid work abundant = graduate unemployment + underemployment
Underemployment & the skills economy myth 2011: 35.9% recent graduates in low skilled jobs - up from 26.7% in 2001 (ONS, 2012) 2014: ¾ graduates may never earn enough to pay back student loans (Higher Education Committee, 2014)
CONCLUSION: Underemployment (job insecurity, unemployment, over-qualification etc) = widespread amongst disadvantaged and better off young people Underemployment is the 21 st century global normality for youth in the labour market (K. Roberts, 2009) Youth workers do great work to help young people but... Underemployment cannot be fixed by addressing young people s skills, aspirations, qualifications, participation etc. Fundamental economic change is required for that