Cost of living. Teens with no jobs

[monkeysox]

The whole COL crisis is exacerbated by huge supermarket chains (one example) who are making huge profits. They don't employ as many young people (automation) so the cost of the kid's needs falls on the parents who have huge bills themselves.
I always had a Saturday or evening job.
Businesses aren't hiring nearly as much as 30 years ago.
Aibu?

How many jobs have been created by home delivery? Our dot com department didn’t exist before the self service checkouts but it’s now the biggest department overall so even if self service checkouts took jobs the home delivery department created even more. Oh and the staff are probably more than capable of stringing a sentence together but usually don’t bother with customers who appear to be looking down on them. Maybe try being a bit nicer and you’ll get back what you give.

Teens vary massively in what they can and can’t do and what they need to do. Most of that would have bored my dc to tears and wouldn’t have helped them at all are regards the uni courses and work placements they successfully got on.

Rubbish. IT and the NHS does not work like that. Link please to this “deal”.

Our youngster has been part of school parliament, meeting local MPs and councillors, addressing issues relating to high school pupils in the area, he really enjoys it, is a known face and clearly has something about the way he carries himself because of return invitations and feedback.

It is nothing to do with the way he carries himself and everything to do with a convenient way for them to tick a box of having consulted with stakeholders. Much easier to invite the same person back time and again than actually finding out how representative he really is and going to the effort gaining the views of a much broader range of school pupils.

Yes I agree with all that. As long as they're enjoying and happy doing what they're doing 👍🏻

@K0hlrabi a pp posted the link if you bothered to read the thread, it starts in July 2026. Do you even bother to read?

IT does work like that I have several family members working in IT and have been for decades and can't get jobs there is a whole IT forum running into hundreds of pages about the state of the job market - Indian IT consultancies and cheaper Indian workers over here have taken most of the jobs it is very prevalent. They will work for half the day rate/salary it is posted every day and been going on for a long time. It has now hit crisis point and too many overseas work visas issued for IT especially but not solely IT.

Another person posted up thread about nurses and doctors here who can't get jobs as jobs are being filled from abroad for the NHS. It is all over the news that home grown doctors and nurses are in this position.

Yes I know practising a classical instrument would bore my 15 year old to despair I am sure.

But even in the presume short time between your graduates and our teens graduating, there will be unpredictable changes in the job market they emerge in.

Being top of the class or having a broad range of networks or great interpersonal skills or who knows what they are going to need, we can’t advise them.

Most of them will be fine one way or another.

But that doesn’t change that right now if they can’t earn we need to keep paying for them and things for them to live, have fun, pass driving tests, travel. It’s more additional expenses on families when previously there were more options and a lower cost of living generally.

Politics has become nuts in any case. They're all as bad as each other :(
So much hypocrisy across all parties sadly.
I think employers should look favourably on all hobbies as any hobby could develop in to a future career/business. One is not inherently better than another.

I think the lack of jobs for teenagers is also one of the reasons older teenagers seem younger now than in previous times.

That step in maturity when you start your first job isn’t happening until later.

I noticed this when my elder three, now all mid/late twenties, started working and one couldn’t for medical reasons. She ended up a step behind her siblings in maturity for a year or two until she also started working.

So whilst I'm not sure it applies to the bigger chain employers, I can definitely say that other businesses (especially food/hospitality) will often hire Indian students and pay them under NMW....because they are limited to only working 20 hours a week and that way they work more hours.

I know this happens cos actually one of our recent hires was an Indian student and also made documentaries and was working on an expose into local businesses that were doing exactly that. He went to a number of places and was offered less than NMW and more hours than allowed. Nobody says anything as they know they aren't supposed to be working more than 20 hours so it flies under the radar. 👀😬

For which he'll need his own car and insurance. At 18 that is going to be a few thousand so fine for those who's parents can afford to buy them a car/insurance in the first place.
It is absolutely dire out there. I am a lone parent with a teen and apparently they are expected to be totally self sufficient the minute they turn 18 since that is when child maintenance/benefit stops if they're going to uni (but staying at home) either that or my salary is suddenly expected to support 2 adults given there are no jobs out there. I fucking hate automation for more reasons than that too.
Yesterday I had to queue to serve myself as there were no humans around, and I'm just thinking wtf I am doing helping these massive companies make huge profits on necessities like food by making us all serve ourselves. I mean you used to get your food packed for you and now we're serving ourselves, packing ourselves and paying through the roof too.
I had 3 different jobs by the age of 16, In shops.

What do you think would be a fair wage for someone who is 16/17?

no sorry, I'm always polite and friendly to store staff, but don't think it's my place to lecture them on customer service. If they choose to be rude and monosyllabic and spread their shitty attitudes everywhere they are free to do so. Smiles and thank yous cost nothing.

@hay5689

Maybe try being a bit nicer and you’ll get back what you give.

It works both ways. Perhaps retail/hospitality/reception/customer service staff should use some common courtesy too and they may find customers are friendlier back to them. I'm always friendly and courteous but time and time again, all you get back is grunts (if any sound at all), barely any please/thank you's. And it's not just young people, it's middle aged too. So often you "check in" at a reception desk or hand some goods over at the counter to be scanned and there's no eye contact, no speech, maybe a little nod if you're lucky or them pointing to the card scanner for you to pay. Like I say it works both ways.

Nail on the head. Teens can't get jobs as young as they used to do. So they're "behind" in workplace skills when they finally join the workplace. Even those doing paper-rounds or changing beds got into the "work" habit of turning up on time, speaking to people, following instructions, etc.

Also Indians in I.T who come over here and don't settle due to family and cultural differences are being allowed to basically take the job back to India once trained. So again another job which could go to a graduate after university is lost.

Yes, I own a small coffee shop and we needed one member of staff for a few hours on a Saturday. We were inundated with applicants and even now the vacancy has been filled for months, we get enquiries all the time. I do feel for young people nowadays. It does mean the teen employees we have got work really hard though because they know there’s a queue of people who’d happily have their job!

Yesterday I had to queue to serve myself as there were no humans around, and I'm just thinking wtf I am doing helping these massive companies make huge profits on necessities like food by making us all serve ourselves.

Supermarkets work on tiny profit margins. If they didn’t do self service they would have to
put prices up. Though they would be able to drop prices by 10% if they didn’t have to cope with the level of theft that they do.

Not sure if it is me or my local supermarket then - I know the life story of most of the cashiers from my chats at the checkout! Though I admit there are a few grumpy ones that I always avoid. But when you start to speak to them about some of the crap they have to put up with you realise why some might have responded by being grumpy.

Agree, with minimum wage going up for younger people, we've more incentive to just hire someone with age and experience. If I hire my 16yo I'm not getting as much value as I would by paying very little more for an experienced person.

What do you think would be fairer then?

16-17 are paid £8 an hour (and only recently gone up). The same person over 21 would be getting £12.71. That's quite a lot more to pay for the experience.

Isn't the increase in theft due to self service and lack of staff though!

Not really. There's always been shoplifting. The increase seems to have been driven more by police not taking action for what they consider to be "small" amounts, of up to £250 if I remember rightly!! Basically state sanctioned shop lifting of "small" amounts of stuff!!

No it isn’t claiming avocados are carrots. Staff are still on the shop floor restocking shelves or picking internet orders. They have been told not to intervene - I guess because an injury claim by staff would be a lot higher than the lost groceries. Some of it is apparently incredibly blatant - gangs just pushing full trolleys out past the checkouts and the people staffing them.

I work for a supermarket.

So I’d say my knowledge of the staff and the processes is far greater than someone who doesn’t.