Young people in the UK have it tough

[JiIttiIg]

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.

They don't bother though. It was the same with Brexit. There was a vox pop recently, asking young people why they hadn't voted, and some of the responses were extraordinary, eg "we should be able to do it on our phones".
It really is important to have your voice heard.

Of course it's the tax.

Businesses invest in the countries with the lowest tax rates if everything else is equal.

Why do you think that US companies have their headquarters in Ireland???

"British people aren't very adventurous".
I'm not sure about stereotyping a whole nation by specific personality traits! ☺️

Lockdown totally shafted children and young people, and none of lockdown’s cheerleaders have expressed a shred of regret about this.

The rot set in when Tony Blair made people pay tuition fees, and as others have said, a degree does not guarantee a good job. I remember a press conference with a young person asking him “when am I supposed to get a mortgage?”

Corporations will go anywhere where they can maximize returns for their shareholders. Giving them tax breaks (aka trickle down economics) as never worked. Not taxing them doesn't mean they ordinary citizen is going to see much benefit. They will still take their labour where they can get it cheap.

The trouble with AI and investments is that on a global scale, companies especially large American ones (we don't have our own) do go where labour is cheap and taxes are low. For them, the UK is mostly like a customer buying I products, they don't care whether we ended up with any jobs at the end of it all.

But now that young people can't afford a house or get a job with their qualifications, what are they meant to do? Or their families.

I work in HE and worked at an event a few weeks ago with a number of “student helpers” aged about 20-22. With one notable exception who told me he had worked during his gap year with disadvantaged kids, what struck me was a distinct lack of social skills and no initiative from the young people. The event involved speaking to people and answering questions. Most of them sat on chair with their heads down, not interacting, mostly on their phones. They were of little help. I’ve done events like this for over a decade and I’ve not seen anything like this. The guy who’d had work experience was great, going up to people and chatting. If I was an employer I wouldn’t have touched the others with a barge pole.

It has worked for ROI. The pp is correct on that.

No, they won't.

Ireland's labour cost aren't particularly cheap but all the US companies have their headquarters there because their tax rate is so much lower than ours.

It's not that straight forward. There are lots of entrepreneurs and high-wealth people living in high-tax countries like Scandanavia. They choose to stay because they seen the outcome of their taxes in stability and good quality of life. That would indicate that it's not taxation itself that's the issue, it's that we don't see our taxes translating into good infrastructure. And having a welfare state has been found to be an encouragement to starting a new business, as people know that they will still have food on the table if they fail.

https://www.europeanceo.com/finance/why-scandinavian-entrepreneurs-are-flourishing-in-high-tax-environments/

Raising employment has seen older people taking many of the jobs that would have been considered starter jobs historically. Technology has reduced the quantity of those that exist in the first place.

It was an unusual 16 year old when I was young that wasn't working. Now its normal they have never had a job. In our town its too much hassle to employ below 16 year olds, only big chains like mcdonald s and family businesses tend to do it.

We do things at GCSE that historically wasn't done until A level. We've put such an emphasis on mental maths, i now have to prompt students, all across the spectrum, to reach for a calculator even when they are allowed to use one and using one is significantly quicker. Thats not real life

We've tried to get the bulk through at a higher level of education which has meant we teach to the lower middle. Unsurprisingly this puts a lot of kids off either because it is too fast or too slow.

There are less jobs that are more skilled. Unless we're suggesting the widespread practice of eugenics, the jobs profile doesn't match the population profile. Of course you are going to have a higher proportion of people on benefits. Even if the jobs are there they aren't for them.

Yes it has. But now, there is a core flaw of using 20th-century tax policies to solve 21st-century labour problems: giving corporate tax breaks to stimulate job creation fails when companies no longer need human labor to scale.
The old "trickle-down" argument was that higher Return on Investment (ROI) frees up cash for businesses to expand and hire. However, global economic data overwhelmingly shows that broad corporate tax cuts do not consistently create jobs. Instead, they primarily fund stock buybacks, shareholder dividends, and international tax restructuring. Which again keeps wealth firmly locked in the upper arm of the K.

Thats not the kids fault though. It's the older generation's consistent failure to regulate technology.

Often for fear of alienating big business.

The luddites weren’t wrong. They just lost. Prior to the Industrial Revolution a cottage weaver could support a family. After it the entire family had to work in the mill, in terrible conditions, and still went hungry. It took over a hundred years for living standards and health expectations for ordinary men and women, and especially for children, to return to pre-Industrial Revolution levels.

Ireland- Which they’ve had for 20 years. Ireland deliberately made their corp tax low to attract global firms. That is not something the uk has ever done, so there’s no change there.

Depends what you mean by worked. There are many knock on impacts which make life difficult for the Irish public.

They don’t have the emigration history of the Irish or polish, for sure. Growing up knowing you’ll leave your family at 18 certainly instills a sense of adventure that British people don’t experience

Also, to state the obvious, wealthy people don’t pay corporation tax. Corporations do. It doesn’t impact where wealthy people chose to live.

Frozen daisy I like the attitude. We try to remain positive. Humans are strong and adaptable our kids are going to need to be so to thrive. Both the Saturday jobs they have they got through contacts. I think networking is going to become more important. Social and soft skills will be key.

It’s already on my mind and my kids are only 5 and 2. My plan is to just keep monitoring situations and save money for the kids so i can support them when needed. But for that i also need to be lucky to keep my job and keep expenses down.

People don’t realise an ageing population is expensive & wonder why the welfare spend is increasing!

Ireland is currently the ultimate real-world case study for my point: its macroeconomy is fabulously wealthy, but its workers are facing the exact "K-shaped" squeeze.

By using its historically low corporate tax structure (a standard 12.5% rate alongside a newer 15% global minimum for mega-corporations), Ireland successfully incentivised tech giants like Meta, Google, Apple, and TikTok to set up their European headquarters in Dublin. As a result, Ireland’s public finances are overflowing with corporate tax windfalls. However, the way these multi-nationals operate in an AI-driven economy exposes the exact flaws I've highlighted regarding trickle-down economics.

There is a Multi-National Disconnect: Record Profits vs. Local Layoffs
The traditional economic model says that if a company makes record profits, it expands local hiring. AI has broken the link in Ireland. In early 2026, Meta reported a staggering 27 billion quarterly profit. Yet, almost simultaneously, they and other tech hubs in Dublin executed deep workforce cuts.
Economic analysts note a disturbing trend in Ireland: these companies are no longer "right-sizing" after the pandemic. Instead, they are actively slashing headcount to free up cash to invest in AI infrastructure. The wealth stays at the corporate level, while the local human jobs disappear. With AI, corporations don't even need to physically move jobs to developing nations anymore; they "offshore" the work to algorithm servers.

The impact on youth in Ireland is outsized. The structural gap is hitting younger workers the hardest. Ireland's broad labor market looks stable on paper, but the youth unemployment rate (ages 15–24) stands much higher at 9.8%.
There is an entry level blockade, because tech giants are automating administrative, basic localized tech, and operational support roles,graduates are finding fewer ways to enter the corporate pipeline.

There is a "Two Irelands" Reality: The cash windfalls from corporate taxes are so immense that the government is trying to figure out how to stash billions into sovereign wealth funds. Yet, the local youth face a punishing housing crisis and an increasingly automated, highly competitive entry-level job market

Biggest favour you can do is teach your teen to engage with the world and have good social skills - not sit there like a phone zombie.

That surplus to the gov in taxes can be used for the public.

However away from ROI even though the higher taxes are hitting youth jobs and causing higher unemployment now the main issues from AI are not here yet. The gov is blind on this and we’re heading for a big problem.

Even a Leeds economics grad in the media recently who lost his job to AI gets the problem. What he cites is the beginning. Unless the gov understands how much income tax will fall they’ll be in even more strife.

This is a period of economic difficulty. It’s hardly the first time. We had a much worse period in the 70s and things got pretty dire in the early 90s.

I feel desperately sorry for young people now. The spending on benefits needs to be redirected into measures to help them into employment, we need more apprenticeships to address the shortage of skilled tradesmen and the pension triple lock should go. We also need a lot more social housing.