to think the government are on a hiding to nothing with their drive to get people back to work?

[molokoco]

On the Today Programme in Radio 4 this morning they had a segment where they were talking about "worklessness" in the UK and the number of unfilled vacancies and how the government wanted to push two large groups back into the work force the 18-24 year olds who are not working due to mental health issues and the over 50's who have dropped out of work in the past four years for a variety of reasons and who perhaps have the funds not to have to to work anymore.

They had a man on in his early 60's who was made redundant from what sounded like a highly paid business / finance type career in the city 4 years ago, he had initially applied for 100's of jobs over the next few years and was rejected he seemed to suspect due to his age. He work as a postman for a spell before he finally mentally came round to the idea of retirement. Obviously this man had the funds but so do a lot of the people retiring in their 50's either have that or their health is so poor they can no longer work while they wait endlessly for hospital appointments and treatment.

When I try to look at the kind of jobs that have the most vacancies in the UK the information I am seeing is things like hospitality, construction, manufacturing, agriculture workers and so on. It doesn't seem likely to me that someone who was previously in a high flying career but now feels pushed out due to ageism or someone with health issues is likely to want to take a job in any of those areas which likely involve some mix of heavy work, anti-social hours, low pay and a degree of precarity and perhaps not much in the way of long term prospects.

The man on the radio had applied for 100's of jobs within his field of experience and he would have kept working if he had landed one but it seems like well paid, jobs with good career prospects are still over subscribed with lots of people applying for that kind of work so employers will have their pick and ageism in recruitment is a known issue.

They had a Doctor on to discuss the mental health crisis in the young but he wasn't very coherent, he did mention about improving nutrition, exercise and prescribing gardening to people with mental health issues and suggested that when people go on the sick with poor mental health and spend a few weeks at home watching daytime TV then they will feel worse. I am sure he had a point but gardening isn't a substitute to getting proper mental heath treatment, it is part of that sure but I think young people need more than that and that the things that seem to be behind the rise in depression, anxiety and hopelessness need to be addressed more widely. I also think that while younger people in good health may be more able to do the kind of work in hospitality or construction where the vacancies actually are the problems with these jobs still remain that they are often hard, heavy jobs, they can be low paid, antisocial hours and with fewer prospects in the long term.

It is sad to see people, especially young people drop out of the workforce right at the time their lives should be starting or for older people to feel pushed out due to their age or poor health but a few tax breaks isn't going to make an ex-executive or ex-teacher suddenly want to take a job on a building site or as a chambre maid and a few gardening sessions isn't going to make up for the utter lack of mental health care and magically cure young people of their anxiety or despair in a world where a home and a family seem so far out of reach.

Also page 29 which has more detailed links to national data of this House of Lords report.

committees.parliament.uk/publications/33305/documents/180390/default/

@Octavia64 thats based on a survey?

There are lots of things at play as to why so few people working.
There seems to be huge numbers of kids being diagnosed with ASD, ADHD etc and awarded DLA enabling at least one parent not to be able to work.
Huge numbers of elderly people needing care. People want their inheritance protected and not gobbled up by care fees and are prepared to reduce hours or give up work to care for them.
Childcare costs are huge so many young grandparents may give up work to look after their grandkids.
Every other person seems to have fatigue syndrome, long covid, fibro, anxiety or depression. covid has caused a lot of problems.
As previous posters have said lots of young people with MH issues. I've no idea why this is except for fallout from covid maybe or just life generally is harder for young people these days.
Huge childcare costs mean sometimes it's not worthwhile both parents working or certainly not working full time.
It doesn't leave a lot of people paying taxes and supporting all of the above. I can't see things getting better. The longer health issues go on the less employable people are if they are ever able to return to the workforce.

and pg 29 shows more 50-54 yrs olds depending on state pensions vs private pension

I have six friends who have all retired before they are 60. None of them will be looking for any kind of work again as far as I am aware.

Half of them do voluntary work, as do I. They are self funded, only two had mega paid jobs the others have defined benefits pensions which they have taken early. A couple of them also had quite large inheritances of at least 250k.

So that’s half of my close friends retired early, the ones who will not be retiring early all had children much later at around 40 or a little older.

That’s four who have retired from higher education plus a corporate lawyer, and someone that worked in financial services .

This is a very refreshing post to read and gives me hope for the future. More people are joining the dots and pusing back against system structures that are benefiting a tiny minority of people. I agree with so many of the previous comments. I've often found myself wondering if my own children have seen how it has been for us and decided there is more to life than slave labour. Why would anyone work in a job that does not even provide the basic human necessities of food and shelter and often dehumanises and objectifies them in the process? Education needs a complete overhaul. We should be teaching children the things that are really going to help them to live meaningful and rewarding lives but instead we put children into unsafe environments that don't meet their needs and when they respond in the way they are biologically programmed to do, we pathologize and medicate them and the root cause of the problem is never addressed. I agree with a previous poster that neoliberal capitalism is the problem; if you are not 'financially viable' you are nothing, nobody, yet here we have different generations coming together and saying fuck that. I'm with them on this all the way.

They also need to bring adult education back to the levels it was in the 80s and 90s. We had three local adult education colleges offering all kinds of classes either during daytime or evening, whether for "fun" or for formal qualifications.

Absolutely this.

I don't see that.

50-54 year olds are not entitled to state pension?

I may be missing that?

(I need to go teach now so sorry if no reply for a bit)

Make your pension and savings worthless. aka "The Truss manoeuvre"

If they want young people to work they need to pay them the same as older people.. I always thought it was ridiculous that someone be paid less for doing the exact same job as someone else because of their age. It's exploitative and I'm not surprised 18 year olds are reluctant to work. Obviously this doesn't apply to people getting paid more because they've been doing the job longer than someone else.. I just mean in direct comparison with two new starters, the minimum wage being lower because you are under 25 is a joke.
It's also a direct consequence of brexit isn't it? These unfilled menial jobs... no British person wants to be treated like shit, for peanuts, in what is a pretty physically demanding job... fruit picking for example... maybe the government needs to regulate these businesses and how they treat their workers a bit better rather than calling everyone lazy and saying no one wants to work. People want to work they just don't want to be worked to death for barely any money.. I mean what's the point?
And also they might look at the childcare shambles in this country..
Prohibitively expensive and most jobs are not that flexible around childcare.. what do you do in the school holidays as a single mum with no family support? Its honestly easier and cheaper not to work.
I was a SAHM for 8 years because it would actually have lost us money as a family if I tried to go back to work..
Now I work 12 hour night shifts permanently because that's the only way I can earn a decent wage and still meet childcare needs. But my health will suffer for this.. I won't be doing it into my 50s will I as it takes a massive toll on your health.

I'm a single mum of a 15yo. I'm 60, work full time in a high tech job. I've already had breast cancer once, so unlikely to make old bones..

I was made redundant during Covid and had to fight to find another same level job. Since then, a bonus pushed me up to just under 60k pa, and at that point I was paying 12% NI, 40% tax and 10% penalty (via child benefit).

So for every extra £ I earned, I actually received 38p. Once I added in commuting, clothes etc it was barely worth working. I have 43 years NI paid, so I could have retired.

I have two years to pay on the mortgage. DS has two years left in school. Then I can downsize and retreat to a less expensive area when ds goes to university.

The tax breaks announced on Wednesday do help, I admit. But honestly why would I stay after my mortgage is paid off? I feel like I've done my bit. Leisure time and reducing my stress levels are now more important to me than money.

@taxguru Spot on about bringing adult education back! Opportunities for adult learning do seem to have disappeared over the past 20 years. Yes course are available online and some are good but there is as you say a definite place for evening classes.

Not quite sure of the optics of subsidising adult education when graduates have £50k debts from the age of 22.

If you insist on treating education as a commodity, then you need to follow through and make everyone pay for their own.

Agree! I was disappointed in the little there is to offer in my locality.

I have a few courses in tech I took in the late 90s, early 2000s at a local college. Some were part funded by employers - not just because of the tax breaks , but also out of enlightened corporate interest.

I'm now running into recruiters who don't understand the idea of going to night school.

Those classes weren’t free. In fact they probably represented a welcome income stream.

I presume they mean that these people don't have private pensions, so intend to rely on state when they retire

£60 a term ? Certainly subsidised.

Well the government want older people to reskill for new jobs as their older jobs disappear or they are no longer able to do them. If people are unemployed or on a low income its not likely they can afford to pay to study. If they do upskill themselves and get back to work and paying taxes the government recoups the money that way as opposed to paying out unemployment benefits.

Isn't that what investment is? I think that is the crux of the matter really is do we want to seriously invest in people, in our communities, schools, healthcare and infrastructure? Or do we want election sweeteners such as paying less tax while things continue to get worse and inequality keeps growing?

I took voluntary early retirement five years ago at 58. Nothing would tempt me back into the workplace.

@SerendipityJane re night school

Do you mean they are shocked by it, as in more work after work? I'm encountering people who are shocked and it was horribly stressful, (I paid for courses which don't seem to be available to adults at all now) I can't believe I did it tbh.

and also encountering people who are a bit shocked by commission I earned in the past. It worked well for me but can be quite "dog eat dog".

I dated a much younger man last year and my description of my working life in my 20s horrified him, but in context, he has no chance of buying a flat, whereas that was my big motivation to work those hours.

Without that carrot, I wouldn't have done it either.

Well the government want older people to reskill for new jobs as their older jobs disappear or they are no longer able to do them.

Do they ? I seen absolutely no signs of that whatsoever.

Do you mean they are shocked by it, as in more work after work?

They struggle to imagine a world in which schools, colleges and universities offered evening courses that were open to all.

I haven't the heart to tell them I paid £0 to go to university, with a grant of £800/£800/£700 every year and a rent of £25/week bills included.

Only around £27k of the average £50k debt is the tuition fees though, the rest is for living costs. And the £9k per year tuition fee apparently IS subsidised and doesn't cover the full cost of the course and facilities.

How can people who are unemployed or struggling to pay bills pay for the costs of retraining? They're trapped, often in NMW jobs or on benefits. There needs to be subsidies, grants or loans to get adults retrained and back into work or into better paid work. It's for the benefit of the entire country to get people back to work, less reliant on handouts, and to bridge the worker shortages.

A friend's son might have been able to work, if he'd got any meaningful input from CAMHS in the six+ years that he was waiting for assessment. He has PTSD, anxiety, agoraphobia, depression, misophonia and is autistic. His social phobia is so extreme that he has panic attacks if someone so much as knocks on the front door, friend has come from walking the dog to find him in a complete, sobbing, quaking meltdown. He's been out of education since he was 11 (now nearly 18)

This describes my DD almost perfectly. As a family, we are constantly fighting to get her the right support and constantly being let down. We've been fighting for support since she was 11. She's now 20 and despite being promised when was 14 and self-harming with suicidal ideation, that if she got worse help would be available, we are still in the same boat after two failed suicide attempts.

She is very intelligent and academically capable. With the right support, she could have had a great career, but without the support, she is now unable to leave the house independently much less hold down a job. She will never be able to live independently. She's also affecting my career and earning potential. I cannot take a job that will see me outside the home for long periods of time because she can't be left alone in case someone comes to the door or she attempts suicide again.