Can we talk about NEETs?

[MrsBennetsPoorNervesAreBack]

Sorry if there's a thread already and I've missed it. But I want to talk about NEETs.

Apparently, we are potentially going to have 1.25million young people not in employment, education or training by the early 2030s. This is quite an alarming number, and it feels like we're failing an entire generation - both the NEETs themselves, who don't seem to have very much going on in their lives that might give them a sense of satisfaction or achievement, but also their working peers who will presumably end up having to support them via the tax system.

I really don't want this to be a thread with lots of judgement or criticism of these young people - it seems to me that we must have failed them somehow as a society. I also want to steer clear of party politics if we can. But I really want to understand why we have so many young people in this position right now.

Does anyone have a child in this situation who would be willing to share why they find themselves in this position? What are the barriers to them studying or getting at least a part time job? Are they happy with how things are right now? Are they trying to change their situation? What do they actually do all day? Are they surrounded by friends who are in the same position? What do they do about money? And what do you feel about the whole situation as a parent?

If anyone is willing to share, I really hope we can avoid a pile-on in which the young people and/or their parents are subjected to a character assassination. I would like an honest and frank exchange of views and experiences because I do genuinely want to understand the root causes of this issue, but if it descends into blame and fingerpointing, then the whole conversation will get derailed.

For full disclosure, I do have a dc in the middle of the 16-24 age group, but neither she nor any of her friends fall into this category.

I don’t think this helps much. It’s not the groups who would be motivated to travel to another country and get work. It’s young people stuck at home, feeling replaced and actually costed out of the system.

Agreed. I have just left my job as a year 6 TA for the same reason. The year groups coming through now have so many children who seemingly cannot cope without worry books, movement breaks, fidgets, Lego therapy. These are children that have no diagnosis of anything. Sadly, as nice as our SENCO was she was all too ready to agree to accommodations rather than accept that children need to be allowed to push themselves out of their comfort zone. We have a number of children in year 5 who are still walked to the classroom by parents because they are apparently too anxious to come in on their own. I had enough of the pandering so left.

I agree.

What did the government think was going to happen when they keep pushing retirement age up

Take it back to 65 to start and free up jobs.

Didn’t say it was. My original comments posed the theory that ‘some’ young people simply don’t want to work. My nephews being an example.

Brexit has made the job market in Ireland significantly more attractive and stable than the UK's, primarily by driving major multinational corporations and financial institutions to relocate or expand their European headquarters to Dublin. This shift has created an imbalance in economic opportunity, favored by Ireland's status as a gateway to the EU single market. We had that and chucked it away!

Ireland now have :-
The Reinforced Youth Guarantee: This flagship EU-wide program ensures that all young people under 25 receive a good quality offer of employment, continued education, an apprenticeship, or a traineeship within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education.
European Social Fund Plus (ESF+): The EU provides critical financial backing to Ireland for national employment programs, vocational training, and targeted inclusion initiatives aimed at disadvantaged youth.
Mobility and the European Single Market: Young Irish workers have barrier-free access to live, study, and work across the entire EU bloc, which relieves domestic labor market pressures.
We had all that but chucked it away!

This needs to be highlighted more.

Yes, but talking about and focusing on minorities , doesn’t help. Even less , when it’s used as a generalisation for the whole group. The same as no policy will improve outcomes for the ones that are so severely disabled that they can’t work.

I do lament the tax system in ROi. They cut the Corporation tax to a level lower than most and reaped the surplus.

We don’t have the mindset currently to understand you can grow the economy via tax reduction.

Tax was lowered there before Brexit. We just don’t have voters ready to see tax cuts can be beneficial.

Brexit has cost this country billions and taken away jobs. It was always going to impact the economy, jobs and the youngest the most and your party didn’t care. Neither did your nemesis Farage. It needs to be discussed more. What the Tories and members of the Reform party have done to young people is disgusting and they want to dig in even more!

Exactly. Came here as a 23 yo with a lot of baggage and not many prospects. Despite my terrible accent and Americanisms, I was fluent in English speaking, writing and reading( I could’ve also gone to Spain or a certain degree to France). So despite certain impediments, I could still work in various places, hop from job to job and despite not being a “proper” success story, I’ve been gainfully employed for years and years, I’m good at my job and have a stable life. A lot harder to do when you don’t speak the language at even a conversational level.

By I don’t think there is some kind of homogenous majority making up these numbers. It’s more likely there are distinct groups that make up 10 or 20% each.

I agree with this sentiment although I’m not sure electric bike is for everybody! A PP a few pages back said about colleges being underfunded and courses not being offered meaning that to get to a course her DC would need to catch 2 trains. What’s wrong with that if it’s for the course DC wants? I’m not saying we should go back to the days of my great grandfather who used to talk about how he’d have to walk 2 hours to the mines to get to work and another 2 hours home each day, or even my mum who had to walk 30 mins along country lanes with no footpath to the next village to then catch a lift to a train station to be able to get into London for her first ‘proper’ job after she left college, but surely for a short period of time (assuming the college course is a year or perhaps two) why can’t a young person catch 2 trains to get there? The people that put themselves out to catch the 2 trains and do the college course are the ones that will getting the jobs, those that aren’t prepared to won’t.

I agree. I remember a thread where OP’s 19 year old son was being urged to claim benefits as he hadn’t passed his driving test and the nearest town was 2 miles away with no bus service. A bike didn’t even occur to them. When I suggested it they reacted like I had suggested a magic carpet.

It is definitely multi-faceted but it does worry me as I can see really clearly that the tasks I used to give my new graduates can all be done via co-pilot. I used to get them to summarise documents, take minutes etc.There just isn’t as much demand for junior roles.

At the same time, I do see a lot of things that concern me about resilience and behaviour even at primary school. I think if the problem with Neets are there now, we’ve got an even bigger problem coming down the road in 10 years unless something shifts.

He would still be entitled to UC at 19 wether he got a bicycle or not

😂😂 sorry, I shouldn’t laugh but the extents some posters(the one you were replying to) go to support a certain narrative is absolutely ridiculous.

That will make little difference as company, work and private pensions start at 60.
How about getting mothers to stop work and stay at home with the children (they did this in 1945 so the returning soldiers could have jobs and brainwashed women into thinking this was the only way).
In a few years time with the drop in birth rate there will be very few young people.

Ok maybe it will be at the next GE. People can vote. Meanwhile extra costs to SMEs and higher taxes are costing young people jobs.

That was me. The expense and time and complexity of the route is what was wrong with it. It was 2 hours each way and £30 a day with a rail card for a non earner (full time course). He would have done it but I was bloody relieved he passed well enough to go to an easier and cheaper route.

Its prohibitively expensive for pupils who have already struggled in the education system so havent got level 2 qualificatiosn. They are as the main at risk groups of being NEET and we should be making it easir for them to access learning not putting barriers up. This group often have SEN or are young carers and are pupil premium (often means disability in the household ) so yes a longcomplex expensive journey does matter.

If a 2 hour expensive journey is fine, I suggest that all the A level students travel instead and that FE training is more localised. It makes much more sense for FE to be delivered locally it can respond to local demand and placements are easier to set up.

It's a nightmarish clusterfuck of things beyond the NEETs' control, and if anyone believes otherwise I assume they eat tabloid newspapers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I have worked in public-facing jobs with all age groups and most people across all age groups have very low distress tolerance, not just current-day 16-25s. Older generations just got luckier with the job markets they emerged into as young adults.

With this type of thing there is never one reason and so no magic fix. But, I do think a major contributing factor is what I have called wage compression - no idea if I've made that up. Basically as minimum wage has risen employers have had to disproportionately increase lower wages while middle wages have stayed the same or have had minimal rises. So it doesn't cost much more to employ someone with quite a bit of experience rather than deal with the training up of someone for almost the same amount of money.

Well, that report is a thoroughly depressing read 😞

Also @Monty36 I owe you an apology, I misunderstand your earlier post and replied unfairly 💐

Brexit, COVID, private equity, and having a new prime minister every six fucking months have, altogether, destroyed the economy. Caricaturing younger Gen Zs as self-diagnosed blue-haired weaklings just doesn't change that.

Covid is a factor but people mostly wanted shut down sectors and education on here, it’s more about taxes and incentives than this list.

Haven't read all of the thread, but I think it is a combination of different things:

1) School is harder - the curriculum is old fashioned and doesn't actually prepare young people for the realities of modern life, school behaviour policies are more interested in creating little automatons than encouraging mutual respect and preparing young people for independence and the lack of inclusivity and recognition of differences play havoc with children's mental health - not just those that are ND but also those that are NT but who don't fit into the box we expect young people to fit into these days.

2) Parents are less likely to push their children to find part time jobs, particularly middle class parents who can afford to give their children more spending money. Teenagers social lives are also very different these days - they spend a lot more time online which is essentially free if they have a phone, whereas earlier generations had to go out to meet up with their friends, which inevitably lead to needing money for bus fares, shopping or food. When teens do go out these days, the lack of free teen activities generally means they end up doing paid activities which their parents will give them money for. There is less incentive for teens to need to work.

3) Jobs for teens are few and far between. Both DH and I had part time jobs from the age of 13 - DH had a paper-round, I had a job washing up on a Sunday afternoon in a pub where my dad did shifts. Most of my friends also had part time jobs from 14-15.

Paper rounds are virtually non-existent these days and no-one will take on young people who are under the age of 16 because of insurance reasons - eldest DD couldn't even get a voluntary position at a cat rescue until she was 16 and there are a lot fewer shops, pubs and restaurants around than there were 20 or 30 years ago, which means less opportunities for part time work for teenagers.

Although we would have preferred eldest DD to find a job earlier (she is a September baby), we allowed her to wait until she'd finished year 11 due to her school anxiety (thanks to ND and OCD exacerbated by Covid and a generally shite school experience), but she was lucky enough to already have a job lined up where she does a hobby and it has done both her mental health and her confidence the world of good.

She has just finished college and while she doesn't know 100% what she wants to do career wise, she knows that she doesn't want to go onto uni so is starting to look at jobs. She is already determined to keep her part time job even if she gets a full time job elsewhere, and while looking for a full time job, is going to try and find additional part time work.

Conversley, her college friends whose parents didn't push the expectation that they had to work, struggled to get part time jobs and will struggle to get into full time work with the current tough part time / first time job market. Young people like my DD will beat them to it as they have experience, not just qualifications.

4) The general lack of opportunity and positive future for young people on a more global / political scale.

What is there to give young people any optimism for the future and any desire to work their arses off beyond being able to afford the next new iPhone? When I was at school / uni 25 years ago, we thought we could change the world. We'd been born into the longest peacetime stretch on record, the mid-90's onwards had seen an increase in positivity, global warming hadn't yet become the crisis that it is today. We had cheap travel, the world wide web was relatively new and exciting, technology was developing at a pace which suggested an exciting future. The world was our oyster and we could achieve anything through hard work and determination.

Today, we are on the brink of major world wide conflict, global warming is destroying the planet, it's harder for them to travel due to Brexit / cost / world wide instability, they are more likely to have to live with their parents until their mid-20's due to a lack of affordable housing and increasing house prices, those that go to uni are burdened with ever increasing debt, if they do meet someone and want to start a family, child care costs will cripple them for years.

Can we really blame them for having poor mental health or not being bothered to work their arses off for what they may perceive as very little reward?