1.2 million 16-24 year olds currently out of work?

Volunteering isn’t available to everyone.

My daughter did volunteer at the library summer reading scheme but her friends struggled to find something. She had to travel quite a distance to school & was involved with high level performing arts. When she was 16 though her dad was taken ill plus we had her nanna with dementia to deal with. She became a young carer and as her dad had to give up his driving licence, transport was difficult.

my son is autistic & volunteering would have been hard. He was involved in performing arts & did fundraising events there. but not much other opportunity for volunteering.

lifeguarding is great, but only if you can swim well. My two cannot.

This is absolutely true . My teen (14)had a little job in the summer holiday serving ice cream from a cafe kiosk.
On inspecting the relevant paperwork to submit to the council, the proprietor decided it wasn’t worth the risk of employing anyone under 18. The guidelines were quite clear, teens not allowed in kitchens, not allowed to handle hot water , etc etc. Ridiculous as the cafe was an initiative that had originally been set up a few years back (and received a lot of funding) to be a youth enterprise.
Small businesses like this are subject to unannounced council investigations, and the penalties for not having the correct permits for under 16s are severe, fines of £1000s. Who would risk it?
All of my teens have found jobs in cafes etc but none of them had the correct council issued permits and all their employers would probably be surprised to find themselves on the wrong side of the law if they were subject to such checks, because even between 16 and 18, the regulations that need to be adhered to for proper practice are really strict and tbh , not viable.

There's so much going on for this age group it's hard to narrow it down.

The 16-21 age group now were 11-16 when covid hit, and the implications of that will be starting to show. The data we have in my workplace indicates they're the biggest age group to declare MH needs (to us specifically, not in society as a whole). If this translates to the real world, there's a whole lot of anxious, depressed and socially stunted young adults, ill equipped to enter the job market. We do see a high proportion in that age group on benefits, whether that's full blown DLA/PIP or just UC with limited capability for work. I guess it's easy to write them off as a "snowflake" generation but we can't really say what being remote/isolated in some of their formative years did.

There is a bit of a trend we see in this age group who seem to have been impacted by social media and the belief you can be dripping in designer, flying business class and driving a top of the range Merc by the time you're 22. Tiktok and the influencer generation has a lot to answer for there. Having aspirations is one thing but the idea that you can leapfrog all the starter steps the rest of the world took, and nobody realistically addressing it, sets them up for failure. Add to the MH issues and you can see where it starts going downhill.

I think it's also just generally more difficult to find a job at an entry level now. Like has been said here, the manual floor sweeping and filing jobs don't seem to exist, you don't just pop a CV in to the shops along the high street near you. I could walk to my Saturday job, now we've hardly got a high street and the majority of retail jobs are out of town in retail parks and shopping centres. It's not so easy if you need to start relying on public transport or lifts from parents.

So many factors at play but it's a frightening generation to be growing up in. I wouldn't want to be a 20 year old now (except maybe in body and energy 😂) and I just pray things get easier over the next decade or so before my DC hit this age.

There certainly aren't around here. I saw something a little while ago talking about how there were 4,000 job vacancies in the city. When I looked there were 4,000 adverts but a lot of them were duplicate adverts looking for skilled professional people for eg anesthesiologists! Very little entry level stuff at all.

I had a retail job from the age of 14, but there were way more retail jobs available than there are now. Instead of 30 x tills open 9am - 6pm at Tesco, you've got fewer than 10 and a handful of people supervising the self service tills who have to be 18+ to authorise the alcohol.

I waitressed age 18 (not for long, I was terrible) but again, far fewer restaurants now. Production lines in factories, another good temporary, part-time job for youngsters, now automated.

My first office jobs simply don't exist now, due to technology - filing, photocopying, faxing, post room.

My eldest has applied for multiple jobs in shops etc. Not fussy, just something to to keep her going while finishing off some bits at uni. Most she hasn't heard back from. One gave her a phone interview but nothing came of it. She is autistic and has ADHD but she's bright and capable. Just perhaps doesn't quite always say the right thing. I'm so scared that when she finishes her degree, which has been hugely challenging to get her through, she will not be able to find any work and now her lack of experience will count against her. The only employment she ever had was a little bit of tutoring.

There aren't but ok

For those that have teenagers struggling to get jobs, did they volunteer when younger? I made sure that DD had several volunteering positions from about age 13, she volunteered at swim club, coaching football, coaching cricket. She then did her lifeguard qualification at 16 and got a job straight away, they’ve even kept her on now that she’s away at Uni and she gets whatever shifts she asks for when she’s home. I think paid jobs are difficult to get at that age if they haven’t volunteered, as it proves they can be responsible and stick at something

Dd is 21 now. When she was 15 she had a waitressing job at a local cafe. Then Covid hit, and she got a job doing social media for two women's fashion shops. After Covid she got a job waitressing at a local restaurant and cocktail bar, then a job at a pub.

At uni she's waitressed, done bar work, and worked for a hotel chain serving breakfasts and afternoon teas. She's also been a shot girl (selling shots in clubs). And she's worked for ServeLegal since she was 16. Thats been great for her.

She also does regular admin work for dh - we own a company - and has done since she was 16. That's the only job we have been involved in her getting.

She works bloody hard, is very capable and bright, and has good social skills. She has learned something from every job she's had.

So there is work out there - but maybe not the traditional entry-level jobs.

I'd advise teens to apply to small local businesses, not chains - and to think outside the box.

I'm gonna stop commenting soon. But this reminded me that my cousins daughter graduated as an electrician in 2023. She really struggled to find an unpaid internship that was mandatory for her to finish her schooling. She managed to find one after grandpa's friend of a friend managed to organise one. Nobody else she contacted was taking interns cause it is too much work. She is now working in retail cause nobody is hiring electricians without experience.

Yes. The phone calls start in January & reach a peak around May/June time. The colleges who do day release also insist on a certain number of GCSEs. Some of our senior engineers wouldn’t be allowed on today.

we actually have three apprentices because we felt sorry for really nice, hard working lad who the college told us had been let go from his previous employer due to financial difficulties.

Competition for apprenticeships is huge. Often people suggest them for students with lower grades but every yp I know who has secured one was A/AStar and raft of impressive extra curriculars and pt job.

I have an 18 year old grandchild, who simply can't be bothered to stick with a job. They've had quite a few, after having decided that attending college was also too much like hard work!! It's too much trouble to get out of bed, too hard having to do what they're told all day, the jobs are 'boring', you name it, there's an excuse.

In my opinion, we've gradually made a rod for our own backs with our children, and unfortunately, I think that my generation (I'm in my 60's) were probably the ones to start it. All parents want their kids to have a better life than they had, but I think my generation may have been the first that had enough money to actually spoil our kids to any great extent. When I was a child, my parents could only afford to buy me gifts for birthday and Christmas and there were no massive great piles of gifts even then. New clothes were bought when the old ones wore out, or we grew out of them. We literally had a set of school clothes, hand me downs from older siblings, or cousins cast offs for after school and weekends, and one nice outfit for special occasions, However, when I had my first child, I often saw a little outfit in a shop window, and would pop in and buy it, without having to think too much about whether I could actually afford it. Then, if I had any spare money at the end of the week, I would buy her a little treat, maybe a colouring book, and pencils, or a pack of cards, maybe a book, doll, etc. There is no way my parents could have afforded to do this. Now, how many of you on MN can honestly say that they don't buy their kids treats like a toy car, or a doll, a book, a puzzle, or something that they don't actually NEED, on a frequent basis? This shows kids that they can pretty much always have what they want - obviously I realise that this is a massive generalisation, but even parents who struggle to make ends meet, will do it when they can. We all tell our kids how wonderful they are, and how they can do anything in life. We frequently praise them for the smallest things, and so, when they do enter the world of work, and suddenly find that they're not being praised to the hilt for simply making a cup of tea for the boss, or sweeping up, or filing a few papers, they think they're had done by. Then there's the wages, so many of them think that they should be earning a fortune, but don't expect to have to work their way up to get it, or pay board and contribute to the household by doing any chores, because they're now working and are SO tired!!

Basically, we've raised a nation of spoilt kids, and while there are those that work hard, do well, and have a career path in mind, with things to aim for, there are some that don't know what they want to do, so think they can just sit back and do NOTHING because Mum and Dad have always supplied everything they need, and will continue to do so! Look at the thread on here over the last couple of days, about the 19 year old boy, who would sooner leave home than wash his own underwear!! Most of us are simply too soft on our kids, and then when it comes to joining the work force, they really can't handle it.

I also work in a secondary school, and I think this too. The unruly, disruptive, appallingly-behaved are not learning the skills that will see them adapt to the world of work. So they’ll just end up sat at home, unemployed, instead.

The stress over my autistic 19 year old's competency based interview for a self stacking job nearly ended us all. He then didn't get it (because he has a communication disorder...) and then had a horrendous period of poor mental health because, in his words, if I can't even get a job stacking shelves, I'll never get a job.

Why? What's wrong with them?

My close friend works in retail and there aren't any 'Saturday jobs' any more, which is where I had my first job. They are all on either zero hours contracts or minimum 16 hour contracts per week on a rota. She's really lucky that she's got a nice team in a nice place and can more or less choose her hours, but she left her last job because they swapped the rotas around all the time and she couldn't manage childcare.

They do have a couple of older students but most of their staff are p/t working mothers. The lack of 'fixed' weekend hours means it doesn't work for young kids, even in the nice place.

I work in the construction industry for a small family run firm and I can tell you that we are not crying out for people.

we get dozens of people phoning each week asking about jobs. It’s expensive for an employer to train an apprentice. The people we need are skilled, not entry level unskilled. We actually have 3 apprentices which is good for a firm employing 25 people but there are not the entry level jobs available.

I know proper jobs are what is wanted but can I advocate for voluntary work whilst job hunting as it's a great way to get experience and a reference as well as showing initiative and good community spirit.

My 16 year old daughter lifeguards and so do some of her friends. Others work in shops or supermarket deli counters or collecting glasses in the pub . Others baby sitting. Feels much like it did when I was younger. Part time work while at school

Aha OP, so you is in London after all 😂. It's been decades ince I lived there and the few times I've lived in the SE it's easy to get a job and you need to have serious problems to be truly unemployable.

But there are many parts of this country where the job availability is absolute pants - not just now - when I lived in Sunderland c1980 I felt like I had moved to another country, the obvious poverty was a clear contrast to the SE and no wonder we were called smug/weak Southerners.

I've mostly been in the SW for 3 decades and it's far less brutal than the NE but as far as jobs go, not much going on.

My 23 year old was luck to get on a grad training scheme straight after she graduated but this was because a mum at the school gates knew her and made sure her application went through to interview stage.

However younger DD left with A' levels and despite being 18 and applying for over 50 jobs on Indeed for waitressing, cleaning, admin assistant, bar staff, warehouse operative has had zero luck so far. It seems that so many jobs want people with experience and of course she has none. It is so demotivating for her.