Page 13 | Young people in the UK have it tough

JiIttiIg · 2026-06-01T19:59:43+00:00

All the news stories are about young people not getting jobs and having to stay with their parents. It used to be they had to stay at home to save for a house, now it's no house and no jobs. Can't see things getting any better in the near future. Is the UK now a country that is failing it's young people. Is it going to be like countries from Eastern or Southern Europe where young people had to outmigrate in order to get a decent life? Can't see any politicians having the right answers.

crackofdoom · Today 12:00

BoredZelda · Today 11:41

Young people do not support uncontrolled immigration. Very few people do. What they tend to not want is immigration being wrongly blamed for every ill.

I have also recruited, and in 30 years of doing so, I’ve never had someone say “sure, pay me half the going rate”. What I have seen is, employers asking someone what their current salary is and pitching an offer just above that regardless of what they pay elsewhere in the company. I’ve also seen hyper inflation in labour costs because of a severe shortage, as is currently the position in many areas of construction. This leads to ridiculously high charge out rates for staff. I’m negotiating a price for a major construction project right now. The charge out rate for a plumber’s labourer is £30/ph. This is the person who holds the ladder and fetches things from the van. That equals an annual amount of £58,500 per year for unskilled labour. This is repeated across almost every trade and also with construction professionals. We saw similar to this back in early 2000s, and it was only in 2004 when we began to see more European labour coming in to the country that rates paired back to where they had been previously. This remained the same for another couple of decades until Brexit happened and here we are again.

I don’t know why so few young people are shunning construction, but there is a serious disconnect with what we need in terms of resource, and how we encourage the younger generations to fill those positions. Maybe we encourage too many to go to university to study things we have less of a need for, we definitely aren’t putting as much focus on trades as we used to. There needs to be a government led review of the skills gap with a policy on how to ensure it is filled. Saying “we have more apprenticeships available” is great, but if we are training a million new mechanics when what we need is a million new construction trades, then it is pointless.

There are 750k job vacancies in the U.K. right now. 126k of those are in human health and social work. What are we doing to encourage people to those jobs? This is the care sector, who previously did those roles? Immigrants filled them but they are minimum wage jobs. The change in the number of immigrants hasn’t led to a rise in wages for those jobs, they have simply remained unfilled. I don’t think anyone should be paid minimum wage for doing that job but until the job is valued more, it will remain that way.

The current generation of young people have been screwed over. None of what is happening is their fault and no amount of shouting at them to just go out and make it happen will make any difference. The problem is structural, it is economic, and the best thing we can do is support our young people through it. Especially the bit where they are trying to change it.

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Both 16 year old DS and I recently attended courses in the construction building of our local college, and it was buzzing. According to my course leader it "keeps the rest of the college afloat financially".

This echoes an article I read recently in the Grauniad about a college in Birmingham I think- similarly, a buzzing construction trades department. The bottleneck they identified was employers (and in construction they're usually small businesses) being unwilling to take apprentices on.

Poor DS had actually been doing an engineering GCSE in this building. He was really hoping to get an apprenticeship with one of the big employers in this area but these apprenticeships are very sought after. Both employers seemed to be taking on less apprentices than usual this year. Nevertheless, he got into the final 5 candidates for one, and- given that we heard that they were taking on 5 apprentices- we were very hopeful. After a long agonising wait, they finally informed him that they'd decided to only take 3 this year, and he hadn't made the final cut. 😪 I'm actually very proud of his response- he's taken it on the chin, says he'll try again next year, and will fall back on his plan B, which is studying engineering at college.

JuliettaCaeser · Today 12:00

They go and work for the smaller businesses who actually pay tax to the government

Clavinova · Today 12:05

BIossomtoes · Today 10:25

Is it really necessary to be so rude? The vast majority of economists agree that the UK economy is around 8% smaller than it would be if we hadn’t left our closest and largest trading partner. And I frankly don’t believe any job applicant offers to work for half the wage on offer.

Edited

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The vast majority of economists agree that the UK economy is around 8% smaller than it would be if we hadn’t left our closest and largest trading partner

Nonsense - the vast majority of economists haven't even studied the figures or published peer reviews. Even the OBR's assumption (4%) is an average taken from around twelve external studies - indicating that other estimates were somewhat lower than 4%.

BoredZelda · Today 12:26

Clavinova · Today 12:05

The vast majority of economists agree that the UK economy is around 8% smaller than it would be if we hadn’t left our closest and largest trading partner

Nonsense - the vast majority of economists haven't even studied the figures or published peer reviews. Even the OBR's assumption (4%) is an average taken from around twelve external studies - indicating that other estimates were somewhat lower than 4%.

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So, still smaller then?

BoredZelda · Today 12:32

crackofdoom · Today 12:00

Both 16 year old DS and I recently attended courses in the construction building of our local college, and it was buzzing. According to my course leader it "keeps the rest of the college afloat financially".

This echoes an article I read recently in the Grauniad about a college in Birmingham I think- similarly, a buzzing construction trades department. The bottleneck they identified was employers (and in construction they're usually small businesses) being unwilling to take apprentices on.

Poor DS had actually been doing an engineering GCSE in this building. He was really hoping to get an apprenticeship with one of the big employers in this area but these apprenticeships are very sought after. Both employers seemed to be taking on less apprentices than usual this year. Nevertheless, he got into the final 5 candidates for one, and- given that we heard that they were taking on 5 apprentices- we were very hopeful. After a long agonising wait, they finally informed him that they'd decided to only take 3 this year, and he hadn't made the final cut. 😪 I'm actually very proud of his response- he's taken it on the chin, says he'll try again next year, and will fall back on his plan B, which is studying engineering at college.

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Yes, there is a bottleneck there, I agree. We’re seeing more projects put on hold across the board (contractors won’t fix prices because of the Iran situation, clients can’t accept open tenders because of budgets etc) so right now the smaller companies are holding off. We are seeing some movement so finger crossed it will be soon. But that aside, there is still a shortage so hopefully he will find something soon. There is also a huge shortage of engineers so I’m confident his career path will be there for him. Glad he is keeping his chin up.

Clavinova · Today 12:34

BoredZelda · Today 12:26

So, still smaller then?

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Not necessarily - the studies used by the OBR mostly estimated that immigration would be much lower than it is. Also, whilst it is now recognised that Brexit- uncertainty caused problems, that's mostly diminished.

crackofdoom · Today 12:38

BoredZelda · Today 12:32

Yes, there is a bottleneck there, I agree. We’re seeing more projects put on hold across the board (contractors won’t fix prices because of the Iran situation, clients can’t accept open tenders because of budgets etc) so right now the smaller companies are holding off. We are seeing some movement so finger crossed it will be soon. But that aside, there is still a shortage so hopefully he will find something soon. There is also a huge shortage of engineers so I’m confident his career path will be there for him. Glad he is keeping his chin up.

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I hope so, it was me that advised him to go into engineering for that reason! 😳 And he is still quite young...I imagine the final places may have gone to 18 year olds . But the company he nearly got a place with has just lost a big contract apparently.

(The other one's doing fine....it makes things for the global super rich, ironically. But there was even more competition for apprenticeships there- 500 kids turned up at the information evening- for 12 places. Perhaps they should put a 0.01% levy on the price of their products to pay for more apprentices?? I know I know, that's crazy socialist talk)

Newname26 · Today 13:32

BoredZelda · Today 11:41

Young people do not support uncontrolled immigration. Very few people do. What they tend to not want is immigration being wrongly blamed for every ill.

I have also recruited, and in 30 years of doing so, I’ve never had someone say “sure, pay me half the going rate”. What I have seen is, employers asking someone what their current salary is and pitching an offer just above that regardless of what they pay elsewhere in the company. I’ve also seen hyper inflation in labour costs because of a severe shortage, as is currently the position in many areas of construction. This leads to ridiculously high charge out rates for staff. I’m negotiating a price for a major construction project right now. The charge out rate for a plumber’s labourer is £30/ph. This is the person who holds the ladder and fetches things from the van. That equals an annual amount of £58,500 per year for unskilled labour. This is repeated across almost every trade and also with construction professionals. We saw similar to this back in early 2000s, and it was only in 2004 when we began to see more European labour coming in to the country that rates paired back to where they had been previously. This remained the same for another couple of decades until Brexit happened and here we are again.

I don’t know why so few young people are shunning construction, but there is a serious disconnect with what we need in terms of resource, and how we encourage the younger generations to fill those positions. Maybe we encourage too many to go to university to study things we have less of a need for, we definitely aren’t putting as much focus on trades as we used to. There needs to be a government led review of the skills gap with a policy on how to ensure it is filled. Saying “we have more apprenticeships available” is great, but if we are training a million new mechanics when what we need is a million new construction trades, then it is pointless.

There are 750k job vacancies in the U.K. right now. 126k of those are in human health and social work. What are we doing to encourage people to those jobs? This is the care sector, who previously did those roles? Immigrants filled them but they are minimum wage jobs. The change in the number of immigrants hasn’t led to a rise in wages for those jobs, they have simply remained unfilled. I don’t think anyone should be paid minimum wage for doing that job but until the job is valued more, it will remain that way.

The current generation of young people have been screwed over. None of what is happening is their fault and no amount of shouting at them to just go out and make it happen will make any difference. The problem is structural, it is economic, and the best thing we can do is support our young people through it. Especially the bit where they are trying to change it.

Show quote history

Please don't kid yourself. A plumbers labourer is not a completely unskilled roll. A lot of the time they'll be plumbers who never completed their final qualifications for whatever reason.

Also construction labourers carry all sorts of plant qualifications too, they might be classed as a labourer but you ain't walking onto a site as a labourer without a CSCS card and then they'll be asking what plant tickets have you got?

BoredZelda · Today 13:44

Clavinova · Today 12:34

Not necessarily - the studies used by the OBR mostly estimated that immigration would be much lower than it is. Also, whilst it is now recognised that Brexit- uncertainty caused problems, that's mostly diminished.

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Yes, necessarily. The economy is provably performing less well than it would have done if we remained in the EU. By every metric.

Denying this is the largest part of the problem. Pointing different directions to give other reasons is not helping. Those who ripped us out of the EU said they had a plan, they said we’d have control of our borders. Net migration rocketed. They said we’d have £350 billion more to spend. Even if you exclude the impact of covid, the deficit has grown. They said we’d have new trade deals. So far the ones which have materialised are crap. When U.K. farmers raised concerns about Australian imports, the response was “they don’t meet current quotas anyway, they’ll never meet the new ones”. At best it may increase U.K. GDP by 0.08% but hey, we get TimTams.

Until those who support Brexit accept it hasn’t been good for us, and get on board with those who are trying to rectify it, Britain will never recover.