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?

It’s £8 per hour for 16 and 17 year olds. What do you think would be a more appropriate amount?

Both my DCs trained at lifeguards at 16 or 18 (DC2 was delayed due to pandemic). Both walked straight into a job. The qualification takes a week and costed £300 last time I looked (a year or so ago). The courses are frequently in school holidays. You obviously have to be able to swim but and have a reasonable level of fitness but nothing unusual. You don’t need to be a club swimmer, just an ordinary OK swimmer. One of the best bits is that you have constant (monthly) training on first aid and CPR so once anyone has been a lifeguard for a few months, they are very confident on first aid and CPR - everyone should learn that IMHO.

Sweeping hair isn’t a real job for an adult. It’s a job for a 14yo and worth about £5/hour. Turning it into a job for a grown person to pay rent and bills on hasn’t made it pay more, it’s made the job disappear and the sweeping and tea making fall onto the qualified people to do as extra for free.
Kids jobs have gone, except acting and modelling which is apparently completely fine.

I agree sweeping up hair in a salon is not a job for an adult. Salons are still allowed to employ under 16s. I’ve not seen any on the salon I go to but I am normally there during school hours, so no idea whether it is still common for salons to employ under 16s.

This is double what I earned at that age 20 years ago. Have other salaries doubled in this time? If so, it’s probably reasonable but if not it is probably high.

It’s not quite that simple…..

What made you think that?

The teens I know have many jobs at the age of 16 and under - office cleaning, English conversation online for foreign students, sticking up at skittles, poolside assistant (not lifeguard), delivering community magazines, waitressing, activity monitors for holiday clubs etc. My oldest got his 4hr a week Costa job at 16 (but they pay the same rate for all ages so I can understand why they sometimes prefer older workers).

I earned £4.75 as a teenager more than 20 years ago, so to me £5 today would seem too low. Granted, I wasn’t working in a hair salon, but still.
Back then, £4.75 would have stretched a reasonable amount. What can you buy with £5 these days? Barely a cup of coffee!

Not many people have papers delivered anymore. And my salon has cut trainees by half and now has only one teen to sweep and get drinks instead of 3. I was chatting to my stylist about it as she washed my hair herself rather than hand me over to a trainee and did a quick sweep up herself. She said the costs have gone up so much and they don’t feel they can increases costs to clients any more than they already have, so staff is the only area they can cut.

In 2006 the minimum wage was £5.35 and now it is £12.71. So relatively speaking you did much better than today’s 16 and 17yo!!!!

Where do you live?

I don’t think employment rights are better now for teens.

Back in the 80s and 90s work, if you got a job it was pretty much yours with guaranteed hours until you quit - unless your were for not turning or being late etc. Now you see plenty of threads about teens being asked to do ‘trial’ shifts and never being paid and not getting a job either and not uncommon for zero hours type ‘contracts’ to be given rather than fixed hours.

Gloucestershire

The issue with under 18's is that the minimum wage may be £8 an hour but the regulations are so tight that they aren't employed. It's too much hassle for supermarkets to have them on the till and have to call someone over all the time, they have to be supervised etc. I'm not saying it's wrong necessarily but they simply can't get part time work, then when they get to 18 employers may as well get an older person with more experience. The issue with the minimum wage is that is added to so many other things that it's killed growth, and without growth you don't have enough jobs. Supermarkets have notoriously tight profit margins. Food in this country is pretty cheap compared to other places.

Yes I agree the unpaid trial thing is a relatively new thing. But in my jobs as a teen I never had a contract, holiday pay, my employers probably didnt have relevant insurance, no working time regs, no H&S training, and a fair bit of bullying and sexual harassment thrown into the workplace for good measure. Even small businesses now need to do a lot more HR and carry a lot more risk than they used to. IME it means that young people who manage to get a job are on the whole treated better, but are less likely on the whole to get the job when there is someone older with experience and references applying.

There were more jobs in the 90s but I don't think the terms and conditions were much better.

My first job was £2.50/hour in 1995. That would be just over £5 now and it wasn't a youth rate either, fully grown adults were on that rate of pay (dickension packing plant in the North)

I got the sack for not working hard enough. after burning my hand using a glue gun with no training or ppe. No notice or anything.

I had another job which was zero hours and when I said I couldn't work one weekend due to other commitments (going to a festival) I got the boot.

The only bright spot was not having to pay tax, as a student, but that lead to being slapped in the face on a production line by a long term 'proper' worker who didn't like the fact that students got more than them. Happy times!

Aren’t vape shops and Turkish barbers meant to be mostly fronts for criminal activity?

Many teens now get their first PT job or work experience through "family and friends" contacts. I don't want to employ anyone but I gave two of my great nieces some work experience in my antiques business. They helped with back office functions and photo shoots. As my surname is completely different there is nothing on their CV to show that I was a relative. I referred one of them to a local friend of mine in the antiques trade. She now regularly helps out at weekend antique fairs. Not a regular job but something to put on her cv and to show valuable customer service experience.

I've seen this practice called out on local Facebook groups recently. I would want to know about and avoid any restaurant doing this

If UK is anything like New Zealand supermarkets are employing more people than ever but not at the tills. My son (20) works at a supermarket doing the online and click and collect orders and they actually need a good sized team to get through orders. It's not really an entry level job for a teen though as you really need to be familiar with products to keep your pick rate up. He started out on tills as a teenager after school but was really lucky to get the job. They have about 500 applicants for every job atm.
It is getting harder to get part time jobs especially ones that will work around school or university hours and our youth unemployment level is climbing due to lack of entry level jobs. I also notice older women who would normally have retired in the past holding on to their jobs longer for different reasons. He has workmates in their 70s and even 80s at his work.

I do wonder if they are paying them less.

One of the factors that made people vote for Brexit was (or still is…) the dubious practice of some big businesses to only advertise for certain UK-based job in other countries and not in the UK, so they can pay less than the minimum wage.

Yeh he will need public liability plus employers liability so the premiums could be higher with a teen on there

I work in health and social care, enabling the elderly to live independent lives at home. I really enjoy it.

In the last few months my company have taken on three women in their very early 20s - one is still at university and one graduated last year as a physiotherapist, but said there are so many more graduates than jobs.

They’re all really good at the job and clients love them. My DD19 is struggling to find work and I’ve suggested she joins me as well. She said an emphatic no, but a few months more with no luck she may change her mind…