Do people understand that many of us have lived through high periods of unemployment?

[marymarkle]

There are major issues for young people today with zero hour contracts and high housing costs. But I do get a bit fed up with comments that state that life is much harder for young people now that ever before.

I left school during the Thatcher year. Unemployment was very high and outside London whole communities were decimated by this, I still remember a classmate just before we left coming into school excited because they had secured a job in a factory. Jobs were very hard to get, reaching a peak of 10.8% unemployed in the early 1980's, and that was with them fidding the unemployment figures. And there was no MW, wages were often very very low. Yes house prices were cheaper, but that only benefited those already doing well.

I remember it as a very grim time in our country. While the City was booming and people earned massive bonuses, street homelessness soared, use of illegal drugs soared, as did crime. And many adults in their 50s who lost jobs during this time, never worked again. It was a grim time economically to be young.

Me too.

I think expectations increase with each generation too

This ^^

It's very true. So many currently think life should be handed to them on a plate.

But expectations of people increase. When I was little, no one had the internet. No one had a computer. It wasn't unusual not to have a landline phone, let alone a mobile phone. So no one made demands of us that could only be met by people who had these things. Nowadays, such demands are made. DS2's homework is often online. Ds1's dinner money top ups can only be made via an online portal as his school is 'cashless'. Schools, agencies, medical services etc expect to be able to contact me immediately and on demand- when I worked in a purely safeguarding role a few years back, someone raised as a safeguarding concern the fact that a child's parents didn't have mobile phones and were thus hard to contact!

They don't want to work, save, go without things etc in order to build up their life.

Oh god, this sounds like another "if you weren't always buying avocados you could have had a house deposit saved by now" trope. I work. I try to save. I definitely go without things. Still can't do much life building, because these days two full time incomes really does leave you just about managing, whereas when my parents were starting out, they could buy a house on one single, average, income.

When I was younger I worked 1 X full time & 2 X part time jobs to save up to buy a house. I rented, worked and lived frugally. Then I got a better paying FT job. I currently work 2 jobs. Several of my friends work 2 jobs. Some young people now expect gap years to travel, expensive gadgets, eat out alot, fancy cars, don't want to rent in a shared house, expectations have changed 10 year olds with expensive mobile phones...

*mobyduck- as has already been made clear here is that more or less all previous financial messes were beyond teh control of 'the ordinary man'. They were caused by the rich and powerful playing games with our money.

This oncoming mess was self-inflicted, by a 1/3 of the population. And as for that 'make you stronger' bollocks, not if you can't afford to eat or your drugs run out.

Struggling to muster 'the right attitude', sorry.

Do you vote Tory?...*

Miljah, I think you'll find Brexit is not only out of the control of the ordinary person, it is out of the control of the government.
And I think 17m out of 65m is less than a quarter, not a third.

This thread has been taken over by Daily Mail 'readers'. Abandon ship!

Started work in 1980 having dropped out of uni and finished a cordon bleu cookery course. Thought I might do directors lunches but got a job as a PA in the City. Before that did all sorts of odd jobs waitressing, temping, etc. Worked my way onto the syndicate desk and then the trading floor. Lots of my friends said I was nuts to work so hard and it would all be at the expense of my personal life. Bought a flat, bought a house, met the man of my dreams, had dc, gave up work.

Restarted work after a 7 year break. At the bottom on peanuts but they supported my prof quals and am now a director on £100k plus. Common theme: lots of the school gate mums said I was nuts to work a low paid, bottom rung job and it wd harm the dc.

DC are now 24 and 20. DS went to Oxford but was never short of caddying work from age 17. Worked every holiday for a PR firm, unpaid the first year. Paid thereafter. Had a gap year and got a marketing job. Now doing a Masters and 10-15 hrs a week at £16ph and they have offered him £40k if he goes back to full time.

DD had a gap year before uni. Found a two day a week job as a receptionist and bar work at a national chain. Moved onto hospitality and worked Royal Ascot, Wimbledon, various other events. Got a v high hourly rate when they realised she could sign even though only the basics because she did the BSL foundation that year. Now at Cambridge.

Many of DS's friends are on £60k doing coding or in the City.

You are a grafter or you aren't. Our DC don't even need to work.

I have never been out of work or had difficulty finding work. I can write well, have a reasonably mathematical mind and am far from academic. I smile, engage people, am willing and work hard. So do the DC.

I must add, for most on nmw in shops etc you are expected to sign a contract to be available to work from 7am-9pm. How are you supposed to arrange a second job around that?

Likewise arranging set shifts is near impossible now thanks to the "revolution' of flexible working. Making it so much harder again for those without family childcare.

Employers value their staff so much less nowadays- everyone is disposable. At my previous job it was expected that everyone got there 45 mins early and just stayed until the work was finished (no overtime just the promise of lieu time that you can never actually take). I could never do that with young children. If you opted not to work the hours you got shit appraisals and were eventually managed out

Sorry off topic rant over

The eighties were much worse than today.

The country was being run by a crazy woman with no regard for us; America was run by a multi millionaire who was even crazier. There were constant arguments over Europe, Ireland, the Middle East, etc. Far right organisations on the streets. Terrorism all over the world. America and Russia had enough nukes to destroy the planet, never mind the growing environmental crisis, global warming and countless species on the verge of extinction. The economy was in the process of being ruined by a bunch of overpaid bankers and tax dodging fat cats, as out manufacturing industries virtually ceased to exist. The England football team hadn’t won the World Cup since 1966. The cricket team was being destroyed by West Indies fast bowlers, and we had no idea where our next men’s Wimbledon champion might come from.

Nothing like today.

Er.........hang on..........

Well I for one am grateful that we finally found a solution to poverty and unemployment. Just work hard. Who will tell the poor and unemployed?

DC are now 24 and 20. DS went to Oxford but was never short of caddying work from age 17.
Caddying, eh? How did he get into that?

Worked every holiday for a PR firm, unpaid the first year.
Good for him. Very far sighted of him to have parents rich enough to sustain him whilst he did unpaid work.

Work hard and smile.
(and have the right background, parents and accent)

marymarkle
I didn't know a single person in the 80s who owned their own home apart from middle class people live the GP or teacher. And a smaller proportion of people owned their home in the 80s than do now.

What a load of tosh! Loads of working class people could afford to buy houses in the 70's and 80's. The North and Midlands is full of terraced houses and 'modern estates' and it's not only the educated GP's and teachers who bought them. It was the factory workers, shop staff etc. who produced the goods we used to export, long before everything was mass produced by folks in Taiwan and China. They got a job and it was for life. Maybe fewer prospects to promotion if you were female, but you could easily manage on your income. Food was relatively cheap as you just ate the same meat and 2 veg type meals week in, week out but as everyone did this, it was hardly deprivation. If you wanted to go to night school, it was free. That's how my mum trained to be a secretary. She worked as a secretary and my dad was a waster alcoholic but they could still just afford to buy a 1930's 3 bed semi. We didn't have central heating or an indoor loo until I was 16 but that wasn't exceptional amongst my school pals.

I genuinely think it's much harder for youngsters nowadays. Stress is a real problem that was virtually unheard of in my day. You had the odd person who suffered 'from her nerves' but nothing like the levels of anxiety and fear that the younger generation are routinely coping with from a much younger age. I wouldn't want to be in my 20's again for all the tea in China. I couldn't bear all the peer pressure from sodding social media for starters. In my age group, a few people post family snaps on Facebook and that's about it.

ohTheRoses - You really don't get it, do you?

My first 🤔 is why you think working 23 part time jobs, no social life, baked beans etc- in order to get your foot in the house-ownerships gig today is acceptable.

My second 🤔 is in you not understand that very few parents can support an unpaid internship for a DC.

I recognise my privilege and my luck. I don't sneer at those who weren't and aren't so lucky.

The person I think about when I read all of these threads is the son of a friend who insisted that he must do a fine art degree. Seven years on, he has sent thousands of CVs and application letters, and still has no work (not even retail or coffee shop). He is what he is as an artist, but he is wrong to blame anybody but himself for his circumstances now. Fine art is a precarious existence, best left to those with a substantial private income. The main reason that ART is so much the territory of the monied class is that most of the aspirants eventually decide they need to eat rather than paint.

That may deprive the world of talent.

Getting into it was easy; staying in it wasn't. There for 6.30am tee offs. Most of his friends only did it once. He was booked 6 mornings a week often.

Agree - Expectations are much higher and we also know how the other half live in much more detail.
I have family who lived in stone huts (not in the UK) with a wood burning stove and lived off the land. There is no way anyone would do this or has done this over the past 50 years.

I think all generations think they're worse off than the previous one

I don't think that's true at all. I was born in the fifties and my parents had lived through the war. Mother didn't know if father would ever come home. She worked days and evenings in a factory and lived off rations. Always had an ear out for the air raid sirens and walked home from work in the pitch black with a torch which was only allowed to point downwards. I could go on.

However, she and her sisters claimed it wasn't all that bad, they had quite a jolly time, and the community spirit and 'all in it together ' atmosphere kept them all cheerful (cheerful!!??).

I'm definitely not worse off than them. Though we weren't very well off and didn't have much in the way of material things, we lived in a council house and I started work at 15 (in a clothing factory) to contribute to my keep, I was fed and clothed and happy. My Dad had a white collar job and my mother worked part time cleaning offices in the evening.We were all pretty content and much the same as everyone else in the community (barring the scallywags every council estate suffers) There was, however, a two month period when they couldn't afford me any new shoes. Mine had a hole in the sole, so I stuffed newspaper in it to save my foot from getting sore Of course the newspaper wore through in minutes. It took a teacher to write to my parents to get that sorted.

This was way before everyone had a television, or a landline (a what? we would have asked) If you had a car you were posh. Getting your first electric washing machine was an occasion. The three day week saw hoardes of people walking the three miles into town, to work, because the buses were off. It engendered a really close sense of community togetherness. Sitting in the pub in candlelight during the power cuts, and only having bottled drinks because the electric pumps didn't work. Power suddenly coming back on and the make up you carefully applied in candlelight suddenly becoming reminiscent of Coco the Clown in the harsh electric light.
Buying a primas stove so you could have a brew.
Having sandwiches for tea because the electric was off for 12 hours out of 24. Oh what fun we had!! I'm pretty sure, and I'm rather hoping, that some of the older MN contributors can remind me of all the delights of 70s - council house - power cut - three day week living.

We had no mobile phones, most not even landlines. You couldn't flake out on meeting a friend by text. You actually had to turn up as promised unless you'd been admitted to hospital or been laid low by flu. And even then you'd send someone to explain why you'd let them down. Sometimes even your mother would go to explain your absence. Because people mattered more than they do now.
The internet and mobile phones and tablets and fast food and the need to be skeletally thin, and have daft eyebrows ( that's a personal opinion only. Some might think those eyebrows the height of attractiveness) And obvs send out loads of selfies to show their new eyebrows.

See, in my day it wasn't about eyebrows at all. No internet, no WhatsApp, no phones, no selfies, no facebook. You just had to get by, by being yourself, and turning up when you said you would,
That's what earned you friends. Not having the latest in eyebrow styling. How you presented yourself was personal choice. Not dictated by eyebrow fashion police.

You can all get out your small violins. I do think my children are worse off than I have ever been. Not financially. But because our family is now spread over the country so they don't have daily contact with people who love them.

DC are now 24 and 20. DS went to Oxford but was never short of caddying work from age 17

Caddying, eh? How did he get into that?

It's a whole nother world, innit?

Every generation or so will have had times of hardship.

Exactly its all relative.

Globalisation has had an impact, thing is, most of us voted for it in on way or another, none of us honestly vote or think of the long term implications. The majority of issues that are faced by the younger generation today was hailed as progressive step forward(Uni for all, keeping the countryside free of house building/infrastructure/warehouses etc, etc)

Sherbert, your anguish for the anomie of your young relatives is clear, but the situation you describe was commonplace in the 70s and 80s. If you have any ambition in life, then you move to pursue your goals, and if you choose to stay in your home town close to your family and close your eyes to opportunities elsewhere, then you get what you chose. The world ain't level and even. And, while you think I am being a Tory careerist, I live in one of the short-changed areas of the UK.

SherbertMelon the one thing you haven't addressed is why your family is spread to the winds...

Assuming no alien abductions.

@macblank my situation was similar to yours only I choose to leave foster placement in 1987 aged 18 as I would have rather have lived in the bed sit. Cost £30 a week for one room and I was student with two part time jobs. Got a grant too and housing benefit which helped.

I was 16 when I was moved out.

It wasn't a nice clean bedsit. Shall I say... It was a 60s bedsit, still the same in the 80s, only it had gone downhill in them 20 years! lol all the other tenants were either druggies, or pissheads... Some both!

As a naive 16 it was a whole new world. I might have been raised by the state since I was 6 months old, and gone to 30 odd different places... Foster homes, children's homes, a strange boarding school for maladjusted kids, a sort of secure unit for holidays. Such a lovely experience for a child! Hahaha

The working class Brexiters are gagging for unemployment, this includes our fishermen, Devon farmers, Welsh farmers, and car workers.
Perhaps they just want a holiday from work.