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?

Bloody hell, I wish you had been my mum back in the 90s! I had a Saturday job cleaning boats and was paid a tenner for 6 hours work and it took 3 hours to clean a boat. My DM made me hand over a third of that tenner for bills to get me used to real life. The rest went on lunch of fish and chips. Happy days!

We’re in a run down region!

My dd got a job in a coffee and doughnuts kiosk over the summer between GCSEs and college and made around £700 which was enough for driving lessons. Once she’d had a few lessons I put her on my car insurance (which isn’t that much for a provisional driver) and took her out myself.

She used the money in a child trust fund to buy a cheap car (2k) and used savings from her Sat job and bday money to pay for the insurance which was around £1400.

Theres ways of doing it but the child has to motivated and the parents have an expectation that they will keep looking for work.

I keep seeing Dominos advertising for delivery jobs - £11'ish per hour, £1 per delivery (they estimate 3 per hour) and you get to keep any tips. You need to be 18, have own car and license for 6 months, and they provide the insurance. I can't work out if that's a good option or not. Has anyone done it?

There are thousands of child trust funds that are unclaimed. My older DGC benefited from these, the eldest has just got hers. Most are worth a couple of thousand ££.

www.gov.uk/government/news/savings-stash-worth-thousands-waiting-for-758000-young-people

My dd got a job in a coffee and doughnuts kiosk over the summer between GCSEs and college and made around £700

This thread is literally about how hard it is for teenagers to get these seasonal (and other) jobs. Yes there are some jobs, of course there are, but it's not just about being motivated and keeping on looking. It's really disheartening for the kids who ARE trying very very hard to hear they just need to be motivated and keep looking.

Average is £35 to £40.
Where are you where it's £60/hr?

My son pays £88 for a 2 hour lesson (rural Essex).

Totally agree with you here, I however have got a slightly different situation because my son is doing his A levels ( so much studying involved hours upon hours) he really cant get a job as he trying to get into one of the top universities in London if he were able to then that would cut his studying time and it just wouldn't work I live in wales in quite a deprived area I have a job however im currently on sick leave having ssp payout for 10 weeks im literally struggling so that puts so much pressure on my husband not able to get universal credit as my husband has a well paid job which of course is only right so this is life right now.

I'm really not sure why I went to the hairdressers recently and yes they have overheads but it wad nigh on £300 I was in there 3 hrs..And the machine asked if I wanted to add a tip 😳

I work for a supermarket (upmarket but not big 4) and it's barely making any profit. Don't forget the cost of food has gone up massively at source. Retailers are generally really big employers and it's just not viable nowadays. They need to automate like any other business. There are far more jobs for delivery drivers but these are harder for teens to do. There is generally a lot less retail jobs about as so many shop at amazon. That so many Retailers have gone bust tells you how hard it is

Have you seen how much insurance costs for this? On top of the cost for a round driver. Not to mention fuel and wear and tear to the car. I don't think you'd be walking away with remotely close to minimum wage for what, 12 deliveries a night?

Seems like a con to me. They used to provide mopeds at their own expense.

When I learnt to drive in the late90s, it was £20 an hour and min wage was around £4.something. so proportionately learner drivers are better off now.

I was so desperate to learn I moved back in with my parents and spent every penny I earned on lessons + drove my dad everywhere.

Driving expensive here too 12 lessons 600euro. I agree re jobs very difficult. Its who you know I think

Jesus H Christ! £300?!
I got mine cut into a long layered bob in a cheapo salon the other day (£12.99 to walk in /no appointment! Bargain basement!) and then dyed it myself and I've been getting loads of compliements about my hair this past week!
I've spent a fortune in the past..with hair extensions and/or colouring..and tbh, I really didn't get any more compliments if I spent more, so have decided that lots of hair salons are a total rip

For fun, I have just adjusted my first Saturday job wage for inflation using the Bank of England calculator. This was in 1998, I started young. Drum roll…even adjusted for inflation it only comes to £2.88 per hour! The job was in a hairdresser, for relevance.

That was badly paid even at the time, so let’s try a Saturday job that I had in 1993, in a small boutique. I remember being paid £20 per day and think it was 7 hours, so that was £2.86 per hour. Adjusted for inflation, it works out at £6.33 per hour now, so still not that great. A total of £44.31 for seven hours on your feet.

Would a Saturday pay packet of £44.31 appeal to today’s young people? You could barely buy a branded hoodie and a latte for that... 😉

In fairness it was a bit low and I remember £3 per hour being fairly commonplace for pt retail work at the time. But it was very local and a fairly nice shop, so I stuck with it for about a year.

I think that wages were a lot lower before NMW and there was a fine line between employers providing an opportunity and unvarnished exploitation of young people.

Basically, higher min wage = less jobs.
Lower / no min wage= more jobs. Makes sense really if employers can only spend a finite amount on wages.

Would young people today rather have a crap paying job( eg £5 an hour equivalent to the very low pre min wage pay) or no job/ a much lower chance of getting any job.

Even older here. I worked in a chain grocery store when I was 15, in 1961. I was paid 15 shillings, or in today's money, 75p for the day. That equates to around £28 purchasing power today. For 8 hours it works out about £3.50 an hour, rather than £8 for under 18s today.

To add, I was 18 when doing the second job: fairly sensible, with A Levels, had been working in Saturday jobs for years, but I definitely wasn’t as competent as a ‘proper’ adult. Nor were any of us ‘Saturday girls’, as we were known back then!

1993 = £6.33 in today’s value
2026 = £10.85

It would be interesting to hear what small businesses think is the right wage for a young person?

Be enterprising and empty yourself

I was doing a paper round in 1995, and got about £2.50 per week. Looking back, I am not sure that was even legal. Oh, and I got an extra 75p per week for being available to do other rounds on top of my own (so I had to know them all).

Yeah, those were the good old days!

The NEET situation is awful but I am not inclined to romanticise the past.

Oh, I think you may have misunderstood me? I am not sure.
I was not romanticising the past at all. In fact, I am sure I was taken advantage of.

I completely agree with you and was being ironic!

Heath and safety wasn’t what it is now either.

Our eldest got driving lessons for 17th, plus most of his Christmas present and however long it takes etc

Yes he sometimes complains that it’s “just driving now” but he will need it, best he does it whilst on our account

it depends where you are but for him, where he wants to study, what he wants to do eventually, he will need to drive - there’s no other option he needs a license - it will mean the difference between a career or not

so we find a way to fund it