Idle youth.......

Unemployment in the 16 to 24 age group is a massive problem in which few seem interested, apart from the financial pages and the Economist, but if we are to avoid an increase in violent crime something must be done. Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal have already had rioting, and we had a dose of this in London, with looting and arson. Spain had high youth unemployment even when times were good; now it’s more than 56% and rising. In Greece it is around 60%. The EU average is 27%.

 

The irony is that this is happening at a time when it is reckoned that there are about 85 million job vacancies world-wide for high and medium  skill workers.

 

This gives us a sound clue as to one of the main reasons for the problem; it is the mismatch between education and employability. This falls roughly into two groups; those who leave school at the first opportunity with an educational standard so low that they are almost unemployable and those who graduate with liberal-arts degrees that are of little use to employers.

 

In a survey conducted by McKinsey, 70% of employers said that inadequate education was the main reason for the shortfall in skilled workers and exactly the same percentage of universities believe that they adequately  prepare graduates for the jobs market. Something is very wrong here.

 

There are other reasons.

 

When economies slow down, business will prefer non-recruitment to lay-offs.

 

So-called employment-protection legislation, rife in Europe, has the opposite effect; if it is difficult to fire staff, employers will be that  much more reluctant to take on new employees. High minimum wages are another disincentive, and trade unions have a vested interest in rues about hiring and firing but none in youth employment.

 

What is to be done?

 

It is clear that ‘hard’ subjects, such as science, technology, maths, physics and engineering should be the priorities in graduate studies.

 

There must be improved consultation and coordination between business and education providers, and between the responsible Ministries.

 

In companies’ own training programmes it might be necessary to have remedial sessions to bring new entrants up to speed in at least English (a disturbingly high proportion of school-leavers is functionally illiterate) and science.

 

There is a clear need to expand apprenticeship and technical education. At the same time the Government might give thought to abolishing the faux-universities that award useless degrees (one has just begun a degree course in heavy metal rock), and reverting them back to technical and vocational training. An interesting innovation is designing technical training around computer games.

 

In Germany, where youth unemployment is only 8%, the wages of former  long-term unemployed are subsidised for two years. My suggestion is that in the UK situation the unemployment benefit of the never-employed should be paid to the new employer for a similar period.

 

And it is abundantly obvious that EU countries must cut their way through the thicket of job-destroying legislation on employment-protection and equal rights, exempt small (less than 50 workers) firms from licence fees and other burdens, and get rid of the absurd Working Time Directive that penalises hard-workers.

 

It might soon be too late.