These past few months, I've seen a number of articles on youth unemployment, generally referring to people under the age of 24 and often talking about people who have never been employed. Some of these articles have been to the effect that these unemployed youth are hanging around making trouble and generally being up to no good (read in a "Kids Today! Get off my lawn!" tone of voice.)
What I'm wondering: Okay, so there are people under 24 who are unemployed and may never have had a job and perhaps are making trouble and being up to no good instead. So what happens to them when they turn 25 and age out of this youth demographic and into the broader 25-54 demographic? Obviously they don't magically find a job on their 25th birthday. So it seems like we have or are going to have soon a significant group of people in the 25-30 range who have never had a job. What happens there? Do they eventually manage to integrate into the workforce? (If so, how?) Or are we eventually going to have people in the 30-35 age range who have never been employed? Do the commentators who think unemployed people under 24 are making trouble also think that unemployed people 25-30 are making trouble? Unemployed people 30-35? If not, what causes them to stop making trouble?
6 comments:
In the US, they are become "the underclass". People either on what's left of the welfare system, or in prison. In the UK, the stereotype is that they are permanently on the dole, and racist. It's not good to be 30 years old and never have held a job.
And I think they stop making trouble (if they were ever making such trouble) because they become too lazy, bored and apathetic to bother.
In the UK, the stereotype is that they are permanently on the dole, and racist.
The stereotype is that unemployed ex-youth are racist? Or the stereotype of unemployed ex-youth is a racist stereotype?
Currently pondering the feasibility of having employer incentives to hire people who have never had a job before.
The stereotypical unemployed and unemployable Brit youth is a racist skinhead who blames his woes on brown immigrants.
A good movie about this syndrome is "This Is England".
Many of the them eventually end up finding employment.
It would be interesting to see what kind of employment they do end up finding. When I was a kid, I had really quite a lot of trouble finding minimum wage fast food type jobs just because I'd never had a job before.
Post a Comment