FOUR out of FIVE new jobs went to foreigners in the past decade, new report reveals

Aren't those classic I'm ticking the boxes to keep benefits flowing actions? When you get a role do a piss poor job at it so you lose it again and can get back to your playstation.

You can be sanctioned for being piss poor at a job and getting sacked.

Do 16/17/18 year olds get benefits?

Because I specifically mentioned young people in my post, not unemployed people. I don't think my friend particularly cares about when applicants last worked or how long they've been unemployed.

It's not about work ethic.

Why don't you uproot your life and move to rural Somerset to spend 2 months picking fruit? You won't have a job the rest of the time of course.
Or, live in London where there are jobs but move temporarily to pick fruit for 2 months. Of courses the money you earn won't cover the cost of your mortgage/rent so you will lose your house probably.

The point is that farming work is very seasonal and most rural areas require short term surges of temporary workers. The areas economy cannot support them long term (for the rest of the year). It's been the case since the industrial revolution.

You can either pull the nations children out of school and send them to work the fields (as some more authoritarian countries do) or encourage workers from areas where wages and cost of living is lower. If the money they can earn picking fruit is significantly higher than they could earn at home it makes uprooting temporarily worthwhile. However, rural areas have lower pay than the rest of the UK so you need to recruit from outside.

It's hard to recruit enough British people for temporary farm work but it's NOT because of laziness and it is annoying that it gets reduced to this.

And what's stopping youngsters who are unemployed and living with parents going for the few weeks fruit picking and returning home after?

How is your post relevant? The source of data is HMRC - it isn’t counting people coming on social care visas issued by non-existent companies and working cash in hand.

Because it is less than NMW work. They get charged for the accommodation onsite, which pushes their wage lower.
It makes no sense to do that sort of work when you have a home in the UK elsewhere... hence why foreigners tend to do it.

Maybe there is no where to plug in their Xbox?

I would also question this
I also heard from a science professor at a British university that the majority of his team was foreign because most of the Brits with an education in science simply didn't know maths on a sufficiently high level.

Britains education results are actually pretty good compared to the rest of the world. The UK scores in the top ranks of the global Pisa ranking for maths (It's basically the UK, Estonia and all the rest are Asian countries in the top ten). At a higher education level the science training/research and the connections top universities have to businesses are usually cited by industry leaders as one of the things the UK has going for it for industry (countered by the high electricity costs, lack of space, Brexit etc). That doesn't mean that employers won't want to recruit from overseas as well because if you want someone who is the very best in a very specialist area you spread the net wide. The UK is also very attractive to very talented people from India/Asia. Partly because the pay is better. Partly because of the high regard its Universities are held in ironically. So UK graduates are competing against the very best of much more populous countries (who to be fair take maths very seriously and also do very well in the Pisa rankings). We have issues
But it is nonsense to suggest that science degrees from top UK universities are looked down on or providing substantially inferior graduates.

And also it prevents them from actively looking for work as you can't really be doing that while picking fruit from dusk till dawn. You are uncontactable for any of the companies you have already applied for jobs to and if called for a last minute interview in your dream job you would be absolutely devastated to miss it because you were picking raspberries. Most young job seekers around today are sending our masses of applications to lots of companies and it's rare to hear back with a negative these days (they don't reply) but they are expected to be available at short notice for interviews etc. So just hitting pause for six weeks or more to earn less than minimum wage is a big gamble and not actually very sensible.
Some people are so sour about younger people and I don't know why but it's deeply unpleasant.

I agree. People seem to think that all NEETs are playing Xbox in a darkened room.
The ones I know ended up with jobs, but it took them a year to do so... and they applied for everything.
It is really tough out there, but some people are living in the way past days of handing your CV in, giving a firm handshake, and getting offered an interview there and then.
The press are reporting that there are more NETERs in their 50s than there are NEETs.

I don't think this, fwiw. I believe most of them want to work. As I said, my friend gets hundreds of applications from young people (and unemployed people) when she has a vacancy at her shop. They're not lazy; they're not addicted to their Xbox, but they have, imo and experience been let down by their parents, i.e our generation.

If your child has reached the age of 16 and doesn't know how to mop a floor without flooding the place, you have failed as a parent.

NEETS are a different kettle of fish altogether. My DD was NEET for a long time; she had crippling anxiety and depression and multiple suicide attempts. She wasn't in work or training because she physically could not get out of bed 9 days out of 10, and the help she needed wasn't available to her due to austerity. She won't be the only young person who has struggled to get help.

Dream job?? For an unqualified teen with no experience?

There are only so many social media influencer or computer game designer jobs out there.

I graduated in 2008 just as everything went to absolute shit economy wise. And I can remember the utter misery of living at home applying for job after job after job. And then hearing helpful opinions on how young people today don't want to work.

I applied for every job out there. I also applied for jobs I really wanted that I was qualified for because why wouldn't I? A "dream job" if you will
And in the long run all of that paid of because Inended up getting a job I really wanted just as I had given up hope. I wouldnt have been able to get it now because of Brexit but that's another conversation.

By "dream job" substitute maybe "job that lasts longer than 6 weeks and that pays above minimum wage? And yes, I imagine a young person would be pretty gutted if they missed out on such a job or on a job they really wanted due to not replying to a job offer in time. Because they don't hate themselves and wish I'll.on themselves

Where does this idea that people younger than you are lazy.come from? It's quite unpleasant. Maybe you could go pick strawberries to prove how much better you are? Don't be lazy and wait till spring, get yourself down to a farm with your CV and ask to start work now. See how that goes.

I was talking about the youngsters that don't have a degree or even any qualifications. Not bloody graduates. More the ones who haven't got gcses. Why would they get paid more than minimum wage?

I've worked constantly since I was 13 ( 3 years part time and the other 40 full time) so I don't need to prove I'm not lazy thanks

Where did I call them lazy anyway? If unskilled foreigners can pick fruit then no reason why unskilled British kids can't.

And 6 weeks work experience is better than sweet fuck all

Ok, and most "youngsters" will also be applying for jobs actively. It's almost a full time occupation and you can't really be out of contact for a long time because if someone comes back with a job offer or asks you to come to an interview and you don't reply on time you lose the opportunity. 6 weeks work isn't worse than sweet fuck all but it is worse than getting a full time job because you were there when they rang. Even temporary jobs in shops, factories etc can easily turn into permanent jobs. Even a part time job on Mcdonalds offers the chance to go full time and progress to manager. Fruit picking work isnt like that. There isn't anything to be promoted to after the season is over if they really like the work ethic.

I already explained why it's more attractive for people coming from overseas. Reading comprehension darling.

Where do they even advertise these infamous fruit-picking jobs? I live in the NE, so near plenty of countryside. I have never ever seen any jobs for fruit picking advertised.

I imagine that is the biggest reason why British teens don't "want" to pick fruit. They don't know it is an option available to them because the jobs are advertised overseas to attract foreign workers who will work longer hours than is legal, for less pay than is legal.

Abroad?
Some UK jobs get advertised abroad.

A lot of miserable old folk on here! Just ready to start the usual crap about the young generation because their bitter and sad.

They mostly do it as mass recruitment through agencies so the jobs will be advertised abroad. Generally I would be very against that but fruit picking is the sort of job it makes sense for. This also happens in the UK where you can sign up with an agency to pick fruit in Australia etc. It's a popular way for young people to part fund a year travelling (pick fruit for some of the time, see the sights the rest) and there just aren't the Aussies available to do it in large enough numbers.

I have a (UK) friend who lived rurally and they did do farm work.like fruit picking. They wernt stopped from doing it but almost all the other employees were Easter European because there just weren't enough people living locally to do it. And it's easier for the farmer to outsource to a recruitment agency etc and just provide accomodation to everyone

I guess you could look into ways of making it more accessible to UK terms as I am sure there are some it would work for. But they would be in a minority and Id rather the government focussed on apprenticeships etc because those provide longer term solutions.

The problem is that's why so many people can't get a job when they leave school or higher education because you are simply not allowed to have not worked before - I get the issues but that also causes issues because it's blocking so many people from ever working.

I think we need to realise the realities of fruit picking and the era we live in now.
My partner and both did fruit picking and tattie riddling in our youths but.times have changed!

For one thing the climate has changed a lot since I was doing it in the middle to late 90s, growing things has become a lot more challenging and unstable. A big strawberry farm in our area closed permanently last year because it has just become too much of a struggle to grow the fruit every year.

The other aspect of climate change is expecting people to be out in very exposed fields in searing heat! I can remember getting sunburnt to hell when I used to do it and that's before we had these long heatwave summers! You can't just drop people at a field and leave them there all day without shelter because temperatures are too high in the summer.

In my fruit picking / tattie riddling days, you never had access to a toilet, hand washing area or anything all day! You were dropped off out in the fields in the back of beyond and left there all day with nothing! I don't think in this day and age that farmers can get away with doing that now! I wouldn't want to do it now as I have IBS now. I think this is why you don't see many fruit picking / field work jobs advertised because farmers nowadays would probably have to fork out for hiring mobile welfare units and mobile cleaners to keep them clean and well stocked with soap and toilet paper.

I think you and the PP you quote can both be both correct; she is referring to a very specialised situation. I don’t think she is disparaging British degrees.

In several Continental countries and in North America, STEM students in maths-intensive disciplines take maths course units with maths students and other STEM students. (I am less familiar with the organisation of Asian undergraduate programmes.) Depending on the STEM discipline, some of these can be quite advanced.

The English Russell Group+ norm is to offer courses within each School, sometimes within each degree programme, focusing on the specific maths needed for the degree. At the BSc and MSc levels this is more efficient, and it presumably works well at the business and manufacturing interface.

But it does not produce anything like the same depth of knowledge, and this limitation will show in a research lab. It’s a question of optimising your curriculums for your national educational goals (or perhaps, across all countries, doing it the way it has always been done).

And the Australians complain about them and their work ethics.