This country as gone into terminal decline

[Carmes]

I have 2 young children in school.

I am becoming more and more anxious about what sort of jobs / careers they will have open to them.

I work for very large company with 10,000s of employees.

20 years ago whe I started work here there would be 100s of entry level jobs at any given time. These are jobs that don't require experience or a degree, ideal for a school leaver, and I know dozens of people who started their career this way.

Now there are maybe 10 jobs that would fit the same criteria.so. All the jobs have been offshored.
Now are the vacancies are for very specific technical skill set or experience.

This doesn't bode well for someone who has left school at 18'or even university.

Your eldest is relying on the admin staff to sort his work/shifts/pay.

My DC's childhood friend is just about qualified as a Merchant Marine engineering officer, and will earn nearly £70k in his first job, tax-free. At 24. The jobs are there, for those that can be bothered to put in the effort, with the brains.

Unfortunately this is a net effect of neo-libralism/neo-conservativism ("Greed is good" - Margret Thatcher), also known as late stage capitalism.

Money, & therefore power, condenses in fewer hands (Oligarchs) ensuring politicians make laws for the benefit of the oligarchy & not the public's.

As such we are seeing an array of excuses used to run down public services, employment protection & regulation, all to our detriment.

This is a US led problem.
Any nation that attempts policies for social benefit becomes a target.

I’m reading this in the USA trying to learn more about Great Britain. My opinion (which of course is just an opinion) is that the difference is that many in the USA have far less expectations for the government to “take care of everything” and see it as an individual responsibility to look after oneself compared to GB. That has helped keep the USA growing. Many here feel the recent election results reflects “the people taking their country back” from a smaller more socialist group who wanted government to solve and supply everything from healthcare, to college (waving loans) etc. Again, just an insight - and there are plenty who would not agree.

Aren’t salaries quite a lot higher in the US?

I was talking to a young lad onsite the other day who's just got his tower crane ticket after a year or two as a slinger (guy that directs crane from the ground using a walkie talkie). He'll be on over £50k and with no student debt. Nice lad but didn't even seem the sharpest tool in the box tbh, just a hard worker.

Apprenticeship pay is so low, even in union trades, that it doesn't work unless you came out of the military or are a teen living at home. I looked into it, they are paying less than retail to start where I am. The long term plan that makes sense is of course the trade, but if you'll be in insecure housing or otherwise unsafe that makes no sense. There are 3rd year apprentices near me who struggle to afford food.

I disagree. I had a near perfect SAT and had to leave the country to get into a "good" school. I couldn't get a paid internship in spite of coming from a very deprived background (because I'm not PoC) after graduation. All of those programs were PoC only. Trump & Vance are going to do nothing to change that. That whole administration isn't even in office yet, and they're already calling Americans "lazy." It's not going to get any easier for average American kids to get on the ladder.

The healthcare thing is insane, public payer is FAR more efficient. I saw that when getting my degree. Later, when I lived & worked in California, at one point I was having a cancer scare and the company I was working for went out of business. Medi-Cal covered me and was so, SO much more efficient. I was even able to keep the same doctor because she also worked a few days/month at a clinic. There's no calling for approvals. There's no paperwork that you do on arrival. It's all just already in the computer.

When it became clear my tissue was reacting to suture material from biopsies, they fast-tracked me into an imaging study instead. I cannot tell you how much more efficient it was compared to private insurers or what I see people who rely on VA benefits go through. If the US doesn't embrace state level public medicine, I mean, I don't even know. Private med care is fine as an option, if someone wants an open MRI, sure: go private. People have tried to tell me horror stories about Canada and the UK but anytime I've lived anywhere outside the States the care has been fine. But at the level of everyone having to be privately insured, it's honestly wasteful and the denials are literally killing people. It's honestly unacceptably expensive and especially so in terms of time. The denials kill people.

I recently read that trade workers get on the property ladder three years earlier than graduates on average. You can be an apprentice in your teens so often you'd still be living at home.

Actually, you did mention the living at home bit tbf.

And average trade salary is £10k higher than average graduate salary.

I lecture, and quite frankly there needs to be some weeding out of poor universities and average students. So many students just go as a middle-class right of passage racking up huge debt they will never pay off, and then get a rather rude awakening when their low 2:1 or 2:2 is hardly worth the paper it's written on when they enter the job market.

Only the very wealthy will have any sort of comfortable lifestyle in 20 years time.
I'll be encouraging my son to do a trade. The carpenters, electricians & plumbers are the ones with kids in private schools on top of multiple holidays in my area. The ones I know are flat out with work & charge what they want.

I don't know why you say "Certainly not America." I'm British but have lived there for years, and my life is a million times better here. I'm in a large coastal liberal city in a state where guns are banned and people are enlightened. Outside the city, the housing is much cheaper than the UK, the healthcare is the best in the world, and believe it or not, most people don't get shot. Yes, Trump is in power, but that doesn't affect me day to day. My employer pays for my health insurance and when I retire, an NHS-style service kicks in, Medicare. My mortgage is 2 percent and is fixed at that rate for thirty years. The wages here are much higher than in the UK and the opportunities are endless. And the people are so, so warm and friendly. Don't reject the US out of hand for your kids. It depends highly on where you are. Not everywhere is a hotbed of Trumpsters and guns! I know a lot of other Brits over here who have done really, really well out of coming here.

Everyone does their own secretarial work these days. My exh is well-paid but does his own admin (like expenses) and books his own travel. In my dept, we all do various tasks that were once done by secretaries.

That may be so, but it's physically demanding work that's often dirty, with long hours, and will be harder as they get older.

They may have their money made to retire early. Have bought second properties they use as rental. Many tradesmen buy doer uppers as they can do alot of renovations themselves & through mates in the trade & can also get wholesale rates on materials.

The tradesmen local to me lead very comfortable lives as do their kids. No expense spared on their education or activities. As I said above I'll be encouraging my boys to go into trades.

Not necessarily. Often the gaffer won't be the one on his hands and knees. He'll have started a ltd company in his 20s as a self employed contractor and then taken on a few lads over the years.

Or you could go into civil construction where it's often the same dynamic. The black hat (manager) usually supervises and tells the lads what to do. Plenty of old boys and fat middle aged blokes onsite who aren't breaking their backs. I know this because I spend all my work week on big newbuild estates and places like HS2 sites.

The thing is, the time demands on apprentices can be huge. Electrical workers have to do classroom work in addition to OJT (on the job training). It's difficult for someone to make the change to trade ork, even though there's a massive shortage of electrical workers. I think gov't's should consider making more grants available to apprentices to support them. Housing is so costly, it's hard even for people in flatshares to complete an apprenticeship without family support. Pay scales aren't keeping up with cost of living.

@HelmholtzWatson "I lecture, and quite frankly there needs to be some weeding out of poor universities and average students." I know someone who is so learning disabled she can't count out change from a till. She can't do anything that requires counting, but got into a university in a mainstream program. Not like fine arts or something where numeracy is less important. She of course can't get a decent job. I attended McGill University in Montreal, which has a good reputation, but I knew someone there who couldn't process that NS was the abbreviation for Nova Scotia. Her program? Education, she wanted to be a teacher. I don't understand why school accept o many students ho can't cope with the work or who have processing disorders that make it impossible for them to be successful in these fields. The schools are just doing a cash-grab.

I do agree with this actually. I remember somebody telling me that one of the obstacles faced by people retraining as plumbers is that you need a certain number of hours signed off/overseen by a professional. This is fine if you're a teenager doing work placement days every week but the issue is that nobody wants to help train up a local competitor.

That said, would it be much easier for a tradie to get a graduate job in their 30s with all the associated debt? I doubt there are many successful trades doing this though tbf.

The problem is that there is a lack of rental properties around! When I last moved a couple of years ago, there weren't very many around and they were being snapped up really quickly! The estate agent told me that the Tories changed the rules on owning rental properties and lots of landlords were just selling.
I do agree with OP, I'm a teacher and have worked very hard for job security which is not the case in many other careers. I have thought about changing careers, but the job market is so unappealing with temporary contracts seemingly quite normal now.
I'd say take advantage of schools career services for your children. There might not be entry level jobs, but there are a lot of apprenticeships where you train and earn (these go up to degree level too!)

Disgusting comment, race has absolutely nothing to do with this

Fungoose is on several threads spouting racism, MN seems to be asleep.🤔That’s what you get with the flurry of threads we’ve seen and a failing moderating system. Racism pure and simple. It starts with anti immigrant berating , builds into anti Muslim rhetoric and then the reality becomes clear- racism is being left to grow on MN.