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?

That's such a shame. I'm not in the UK and there seem to be plenty of teens with part-time jobs here. It's a great way for kids to learn skills for when they eventually join the full-time workforce.

(said by someone who never had a job as a teen - due to being too lazy!)

they won’t want under 18s because there is so much H&S compared to over 18 and in supermarkets there are many things they can’t sell unless supervised

Britain has some of the cheapest food in the world, it’s only profitable because of sheer volume and cost cutting by them. The economics of supermarkets isn’t as clear cut plus our local ones are good at employing older workers, several staff are 60+ even. 70+ who are super reliable. Young people have many opportunities other than supermarkets

@babyproblems What government subsidies do supermarkets get? Or any business for that matter? Most businesses pay vast sums to the government - not take from it! Of we don’t went a well run supermarket system, we csn shop locally, snd psy the prune. Which will be considerably higher with significantly less choice. As for unhealthy food - don’t buy it, it’s not obligatory! Cook.

Not in my experience at the moment. My DD is 17, doing well in her A Levels, etc, but she & all her friends are really struggling to find part time jobs. We even live near a tourist area & there are no seasonal jobs available either. A few of her friends volunteer in charity shops to be able to add retail experience to their CVs, but frankly it's not helping & they seem to end up stuck volunteering until they go off to university.

A teenager is not going to be able to get a job working at Uber - the insurance costs for a new driver or rider would be astronomical for starters, plus anyone under 18 is hugely restricted in terms of hours.

Agreed. I’ve been trying to help my 16 yo get a job especially while he’s off over summer before college. Despite putting in “under 18” in the filters on Indeed, a few have responded to say sorry you need to be 18. I understand with bar work for example and wouldn’t have applied for that but this has just been shops…

He’s going to be sitting around for the next few weeks on games as a result, no one is home some days and when I am, I’m WFH!

Teens are adapting.
Ours don’t ask for much money to hang out with their friends and they seem to take it in turns to pay for stuff. And do quite cheap things.

We knew 19 years ago that bringing a child into the world wasn’t going to get cheaper, admittingly didn’t see Brexit coming, but once it did it was clear it was going to be a financial disaster. But we had them by then and you can only do what you can do.

We envision that they won’t pay much housekeeping either when they leave education/uni, that they will need help with rent for years. But what to do? We brought them into the world, they are our responsibility, the world doesn’t and never did owe them a living. It’s a risk having a baby, always will be, and then you have to pay for what you did.

On balance I think it’s unreasonable to complain about the world not being just so for your personal finances. I agree that it’s a fucking disaster at the moment but we just have to get on with it. And the teens will have to do the same.

DS worked in Waitrose from when he was 17 and there was a great many things he couldn’t do like work any hours, not have to be supervised selling a lot of stuff until he turned 18 so no good on tills or supervising self checkout. This was a few years ago when jobs were more plentiful.

Surely you’ll want them to get a job at some point.

It's really hard. DD had a seasonal hospitality job for 5 months as soon as she turned 16 (total fluke, right place at right time application). It then took a whole year to find her next job. She applied to probably 70 (well-targeted) jobs in that time - I helped her find the jobs, tailor the applications, complete the screening/aptitude/personality questionnaires, and prepare for interviews. Over that year she had 6 interviews - pizza express, garden centre, pet shop, country store, Argos, Sainsbury's. The first four the on that list she was pipped to the post by better teen candidates, the last two it was clear from the interviews they wanted over 18s with full flexibility to cover shifts.

She eventually got a job at Greggs. Which has been excellent as she's worked 6 hours a week through Year 13 and now her A-levels are finished she is working 2-3 additional days a week, plus has already got a student transfer arranged to her university city.

From this experience, I would focus your efforts on the independent businesses, where the hiring manager's own bottom line benefits from paying a teen less than the adult minimum wage, or chains that are known to take under 18s routinely - TK Maxx, JD Sports, Greggs, Pizza Express etc. Waiting jobs in chain pubs, in particular, were a total waste of time, never offered an interview, I think because they ideally want staff who can also serve alcohol.

It is if you run a small business (which has been fine for 15 years). Now it’s struggling because min wage has increased and NIC has increased. We’ll probably need to restructure in the next couple of months to cut staffing costs.
Salaries are the biggest cost for a company.
I’ve got two young adult DC - one graduate who has a part time zero-hours job - is in London living wage and living back at home.
One is just about to graduate w nothing lined up - he’s done a very hard STEM degree but struggled mentally so didn’t gave bandwidth to look for a job while still at uni.
we will have two adults living here f/t from end if this month, we are taking less money from the business so we are going to have to ask them to contribute a small amount per month. The grad has a lot saved up as he’s worked on and off since 17 and is not a big spender!

Obviously.
And they have had a very part time delivery job and been green volunteering since they were 13. Eldest is learning to drive (on our account) and youngster will when he comes of age.
They are still in school with the intention of going to university.

So yes we do expect them to have jobs, but with the job market, rents, driving, zero hours, we also don’t expect to not be paying for them or contributing at least for many years yet.

But we knew this was a possibility when we got pregnant 19 years ago and calculated the financials with a considerable margin of bringing up a child from birth to early adulthood. And we don’t expect society to be adjusted just so they can work.

I know it’s a firestorm right now, we are of course very invested in the news reports and information around teens/young adults because that is our exact demographic. And perhaps their expectations need adjusting or they need to look to build their adult lives outside the UK.

But in this environment I think it’s unreasonable to expect there to be jobs that pay enough for them to buy their branded hoodies.

We are all part of the problem, many of us want to work from home, so manned offices are declining, we like shopping of all descriptions delivered, we don’t think it’s value for money to eat and drink out, we stream films and go to the cinema less. We all contribute to the starter and weekend jobs declining. So when our teens and young adults enter the job market to act surprised that there aren’t enough “other” people doing what we would like at expense and inconvenience to themselves is very unreasonable.

I don’t see it that way. Politicians need to make sure young people can work and not do policies that hamper it.

Having a baby two decades ago or so doesn’t get politicians today off the hook. I do want the dc to work not least because having a part time job shows to the next employer they can work well even if it’s then related to their university degree.

Yes I agree policies need to be more balanced towards the younger demographic. It has been similar throughout their childhood, less space without paying to socialise, extra clubs being very expensive, nothing in council budgets for healthy youngsters for decades.

We have been aware of this for nearly two decades.

But I also think that our choices as adults, which include ourselves, are reasons that starter and teenage jobs are just reducing in number. They are just not there because fewer people are using those services for, but not exclusively, reasons mentioned.

How many posts on here do you read that people want to WFH, at least some of the week, no one gets papers delivered they read it online, or how eating out is too expensive and busy they would rather stay in, because they can have just as good coffee at home. And we do the same, we WFH some of the week, eat out only for special occasions and only really do that because there is one amazing small family owned restaurant, they are worth the money, have a cinema style audio visual entertainment system. Get our supermarket shop delivered, although we do have a milk and separate weekend paper delivery. What services do we actually use from part-time weekend teenager work? Very few.

So yes of course we want our teens to grow into employed young adults, and yes it’s bleak looking at all the data right now. And getting work experience for them was about who we knew. And yes we are going to exploit all of our networks to get them experience or work.

But in the meantime we do expect to pay for more of what they want and it would be hypocritical of us to complain because we are part of this problem. It’s not just about government policies it’s also a changing world of working and consumer choices.

why wouldn’t an employer hire the best person for the job?

You think 2 to 3% is a huge profit?

Even with the recent rises food is still much cheaper as a proportion of household income than it was in the 1950s. A lot of that is to do with cheaper mass produced food. It would be cheaper still if supermarkets didn’t have to contend with huge levels of theft. We also have huge choice at the supermarket compared with the past with fruit and veg available year round.

Having said that Labour seem intend on destroying our own food production including with vast solar farms on prime agricultural land.

Under 18? I thought we were talking about 18 to 24 year olds.

Reduce the cost of employing people. When we started our business in 1988, we always employed a student to work on Saturdays, and extra time in the school holidays. There was no NI for us to pay, or holiday or sick pay. They were paid for the hours they worked and it worked well. These were the days of paperboys and youngsters helping on milk rounds etc. All getting some spending money and more importantly, getting work experience. Our daughter worked for a couple of high street shops, hated it, and then got a job helping in the office at a caravan park. This experience helped her get her first job after Uni as she has experience. In the 90s working conditions were 'improved' by the gov and we had to start paying holiday pay and sick pay. The holiday was based on time worked in the previous 12 weeks, so if our Saturday worker worked their college summer holiday, we had extra holiday costs to pay, plus having to pay NI on their earnings. We could have paid cash in hand, but we always liked to do things legally and properly. This was the start of the end of Saturday jobs. We had to reduce the hours offered in the summer, and eventually stopped employing students altogether. For the bigger companies, a few self serve tills are much cheaper, and easier to manage than half a dozen 16 year old.

Hard op we in Dublin. Nothing going. Dd working in her dads. Everywhere want you voluntary so you still paying out.. friends son got bar work through his friend. They 20 so they need money. Who you know isnt it.

Tbh, it seems that lots of older people are being made redundant and can’t get jobs, so I imagine that teens may now be competing with them for supermarket jobs etc.

Teens. Once they hit 20 they are no longer teens.

If they are bright and good with children have they looked at doing some tutoring, either independently or for one of the companies like kumon? Several young people round here do tutoring for younger children in maths, English, 11+ etc. Some also do babysitting and school holiday childcare- they volunteer with guides or scouts to get to know children and parents, and then put their details on the group whatts app. The (now) 18 year old who helps with our group has earnt enough to pay for driving lessons and tests, buy a car and travel round Europe this summer, so must be several thousand I think.

Also who wants to be driven in an Uber by an 18 year old who’s just passed their test

Agree with this. Small businesses far more likely to be able to offer something.

I think we need to be honest that whilst jobs were easier to come by, there was also often very poor practice and little to no employment rights or protection from poor treatment. The employment landscape has completely changed since we were teens, and now with the Employment Rights act the biggest changes for decades.

There is also a significant sense of entitlement from this generation. To a certain extent - not suggesting slave labour - young people with no work skills need to suck it up and get on, work very hard and be reliable, and accept that their time to stand their ground on ideal employment conditions will hopefully come in their 20s when they have a decent set of experience behind them