I fear trouble when the iPod generation - Insecure, Pressurised, Over-taxed and Debt-ridden - hits the job market this summer



To be young again, eh? Road trips in your little Ford Fiesta, house parties night after night, snogging in nightclubs, backpacking around the world. What a life – few responsibilities, just loads of opportunities.

George Bernard Shaw is right: youth is such a wonderful thing. But that chapter in everyone’s life has to close at some point.

Young people become anxious to grow up and settle down. Late nights, short-term relationships, flat-sharing with your best mates - they were once fun, but the magic begins to wear off.

Recession: 400,000 university students will graduate this summer, facing a tough time in the shrinking jobs market

Twentysomethings want to get ahead: treat the one they love to nice holidays, buy a house, make their parents proud, pay them back for all they’ve done for them. A surprising 70 per cent even want to get married.

Youth is the life stage between childhood and adulthood – between economic dependence and economic independence.

Once upon a time, youth was short and sweet. After the war, up until the mid-1970s, unemployment among under-25’s hovered between at less than three per cent.

An overwhelming majority of youngsters would leave school at 16, probably do an apprenticeship, and be certain they would get a job. Such stability in income meant it wouldn’t be too long until they found a partner and started a family – women, on average, got married at 23 and men at 25 in 1971.

But from the mid-1970s, extended time in education, spells of unemployment and underemployment and temporary work became the norm for young people.

By the end of the 1990s, 70 per cent of 18 year olds were still in school. Youth unemployment rocketed - in 1995, only 23 per cent of European youths had fixed-term contracts compared to seven per cent of those over thirty.

Less welfare and employment protection in the latter part of the twentieth century, combined with de-industrialisation and an expectation to stay in education longer delayed the attainment of economic independence, thereby extending the period of youth.

And in the past decade, youth has become even longer. The deluge in numbers graduating from university has meant stiffer competition for jobs. It takes, on average, three years for a graduate to find a permanent position, finally surfacing from an overdraft-funded stint of unpaid internships and temping work.

Many go on to do postgraduate study, costing thousands and thousands of pounds, to make sure they stand out from the monolithic crowd of graduates with a BA (Hons) 2:1.

More frustrating still is the low salary even after years in the labour market, because the swamping of the graduate market keeps wages low in particular sectors.

After more than three years free from essays and early-morning lectures, more than a third of graduates are still not earning above £20,000 per annum.

With a student loan debt of above £13,000 on top of tax, rent and other living costs, young people are struggling to save enough to reach financial independence. Youth seems endless.



The deepening recession may well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for what the think-tank Reform calls the IPOD generation - those Insecure, Pressurised, Over-taxed and Debt-ridden young people.

Unemployment is affecting this generation the most as companies operate a last-in, first-out policy - 40 per cent of all job losses are among 18-24 year olds.

And as one in six graduate places have been cut by the top 100 graduate employers, the Government has admitted there will be a real problem with tens of thousands of graduates unemployed this summer.

Unemployed, underemployed or an eternal gap year student, a typical young graduate today will see their youth extended even further.

Remember France in the spring of 2006? Young people took to the streets in protest as youth unemployment hit 23 percent and the Prime Minister proposed 'le contrat premiere embauche' (first emplyment contract) which would have eliminated for two years the obligation for employers to provide provable reasons for dismissal of an employee under the age of 26.

The French youth had had enough - just like the Grecians before Christmas, who caused billions of pounds worth of damage to Athens and Thessaloniki after days of firebombs and tear gas.

Slowly, demonstrations and protests by young people are springing up across Europe – Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and Paris.

Here in the UK, the Government has focussed on containing the wildcat strikes by workers in Total’s oil refinery in Lincolnshire.

But perhaps Ministers should be more concerned by the actions of disappointed and frustrated young people.

Note in your diaries this summer, when universities release 400,000 graduates. The summer of ’09 certainly won’t be the best days of our lives.

Ryan Shorthouse is political secretary of the Bow Group.