This will be a lifeline in our struggle for work... we just want to be treated as adults

Londoners have overwhelmingly supported the Standard’s Ladder for London campaign and called on businesses and employers to give the unemployed a chance to prove themselves.

Danny Passam, 17, from Hackney said today he hoped the campaign would be his “lifeline” to reaching his dream job.

He said: “I left college after I got my NVQ level two in mechanics because I wanted to get my level three while I was working and I get the experience.

“I have been asking at all the big firms, but they are all saying no because of my low GCSEs.

“If I got on your apprenticeship scheme it would be like a lifeline for me.

“I found it difficult in the classroom. There was a lot of pressure to sit in the same place for nine hours a day. I think people like me want to be part of an apprenticeship scheme because it is a whole different atmosphere than it is in school, and a lot of young people will prefer to be treated like an adult. There needs to be a lot more opportunities because there are not a lot at the moment. A lot of apprenticeships are looking for older people as well. What about the people from 16 to 18?

“Two of my friends have just come off an IT apprenticeship, and one of them has just got a permanent job from it.” He added: “I have had to begin working as a bike courier. I love cycling, but it is such a dangerous job.

“I want to be a mechanic, that is what I love to do. I don’t want to be on the roads 10 hours a day risking my life.”

Tolga Yilmaz, 18, from Hackney, said getting an apprenticeship would help his friends “build their lives”.

Speaking about the Evening Standard’s campaign, he said: “If it’s for young people like me, and if it’s going to make young people stay out of the streets, it’s a good thing, isn’t it?

“I would be interested in it but at the moment I am working — but I have a lot of friends out of work, that are always around the streets doing nothing, getting into trouble and stuff like that.

“If, instead of spending time on the streets, they can get involved in building their lives — that is what makes the difference.

“If they start thinking ‘what can I do in life’ and learn, and get paid, that’s it, isn’t it? That’s all you need.”

Source: 25th September 2012, London Evening Standard, Emer Martin

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/work/this-will-be-a-lifeline-in-our-struggle-for-work-we-just-want-to-be-treated-as-adults-8175302.html?origin=internalSearch

David Cameron leads wave of support for London Evening Standard ‘Ladder for London’ campaign

Political leaders and captains of industry today threw their weight behind the Standard’s “hugely important” apprenticeship campaign aimed at tackling appalling levels of youth unemployment in London.

David Cameron said he was delighted to support our appeal to employers to hire apprentices and help get the capital’s 120,000 jobless young adults off the dole.

The Prime Minister said: “Apprenticeships are absolutely key to growing our economy, giving young people the chance to learn a trade and helping to build the highly-skilled workforce our businesses need.

“Apprenticeships are good for people who want to get ahead, good for business and good for the country. It’s great to see the Evening Standard getting behind young people and working with businesses in this way.”

Some of the capital’s best known business leaders, ranging from BA boss Willie Walsh to Jamie Oliver, have also welcomed the Standard’s Ladder for London campaign. It is urging the capital’s 300,000 businesses — small, medium and large — to take on apprentices and help get London working.

Over the last few days the Standard has highlighted the plight of young people locked out of the jobs market and the stories of those transformed by apprenticeships.

The Mayor, who tonight speaks at the London Apprenticeships Awards at City Hall, offered his “full support” to the initiative.

Boris Johnson said: “Ladder for London is a hugely important campaign on a hugely important subject. Earlier this year I highlighted the issue of youth unemployment in the capital with this paper’s editor, and I agreed to lend my full support to the Standard’s efforts to address the problem, alongside my fight to highlight all means possible to get young Londoners into work.”

Support for the campaign came from across the political spectrum. The Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: “The country faces many challenges but one of the greatest is tackling our unacceptably high levels of youth unemployment. I recently launched the Government’s £1 billion Youth Contract to give every unemployed youngster the chance to earn or learn. But we need the support of businesses in London and I hope that thousands of them heed the Standard’s call to take on more apprentices.”

Labour leader Ed Miliband said: “Apprenticeships matter. They offer not just the prospect of a good job, but of a route on and up into a career for the next generation. I am delighted to give my support to the Standard’s excellent campaign to give London’s young people a chance to work, which comes at such an vital time.

“Long-term youth unemployment in London has gone up over the last year. This is an issue that the Government needs to urgently address.”

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett said: “I applaud the Standard’s campaign, particularly the fact that the paper is showing these young people in a very positive way. The people highlighted in the paper are trying to make their way in a society where everything is stacked against them.”

Some of the country’s most respected industrialists offered their enthusiastic endorsement. Anglo American mining group chairman Sir John Parker, who started as a 17-year-old naval architect at shipbuilders Harland & Wolff, said: “Apprenticeships are critical for young people as it gives them the opportunity to develop practical skills and achieve academic qualifications. Apprenticeships bring the dignity of employment. I commend the Standard.”

Mr Walsh, who is also president of the London Chamber of Commerce, said: ”I have always argued that apprenticeships are as important as a university degree and, in many cases, more important. My three brothers went through apprenticeship schemes so I know first hand how important the skills are that you learn. It is a really valuable and positive learning experience — but also a life experience.”

Oliver, who left school at 16 and has long been associated with helping unemployed young people find rewarding work, said: “I’ve been involved in taking on apprentices for 10 years now through Fifteen restaurant and it’s one of the most rewarding things a business can do. This is a great campaign to help young Londoners.”

Simon Thomas, owner of the West End’s recently opened Hippodrome Casino, said: “The Standard’s campaign is just what London needs.”

John Burton, director of development at shopping centre group Westfield, said: “Apprenticeships equip young people with useful practical skills that can help them escape the poverty trap while also contributing to much needed economic growth. Like the Evening Standard, Westfield is committed to helping the unemployed with training and apprenticeship schemes.”

Baroness Jo Valentine, chief executive of leading business group London First said: “By starting an apprenticeship scheme London businesses can not only tap into the wealth of skills available locally, but also help to reduce London’s unemployment – which has remained consistently higher than the UK average.

“The challenge is great, but if each London employer not already running an apprenticeship program took on just one apprentice it would make a significant difference.”

Phil Bentley, managing director of British Gas, which is training 1,100  apprentices this year, said: “Ladder for London is an opportunity for employers to play their part in breaking the cycle. Together we can connect a generation with the skills we need to be a successful, thriving economy and, at the same time, set them on the path to their own success. We urge other leading British businesses to get behind the Standard and help this campaign create something special; a blueprint for Britain.”

For more information visit: standard.co.uk/ladderforlondon

Source: 25^th September 2012, London Evening Standard by Jonathan Prynn, Joe Murphy, Paul Dominiczak

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/work/david-cameron-leads-wave-of-support-for-our-campaign-8175262.html

Not having a job makes you sick

Being unemployed early on in a career can have a lasting negative effect on later employment.

Department for Education analysis shows that people who are “not in employment, education or training” on leaving school have a very high risk of remaining unemployed in the medium term (five years) and have a greater risk than their peers of unemployment and lower wages in the long term (up to 10 years on).

The jobless are more likely to suffer from long-term illness, mental illness and cardiovascular disease. They have a much higher use of medication and worse prognosis and recovery rates. In every social group, unemployed people have higher mortality rates than the employed.

These negative health effects tend to be the greatest among the long-term unemployed. Being without a job for a long time can deprive you of the feeling of control over your life that is an essential protective feature of good health. Being out of work results in the loss of a core role in society, linked to a sense of identity, and may reduce social integration and lower self-esteem.

Unemployment also has an impact on health behaviours. It is associated with increased smoking, alcohol consumption and decreased physical activity, contributing to an increased risk of serious illnesses, including cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Employment in “good work”, such as jobs where stress levels are well-managed, is good for health. London boroughs should seek to stimulate employment opportunities, particularly those that help young people into work.

And employers should be supported if they invest in getting those who are out of work back into employment. Among young people, this should include apprenticeships and resilience training programmes.

Sir Michael Marmot is director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity. He chaired a review commissioned by Gordon Brown into health inequalities in England.

Source: London Evening Standard, Prof Sir Michael Jarmot, 21^st September 2012

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/work/not-having-a-job-makes-you-sick-8162903.html

Plight of the Young Jobless – Part 8

Teenager Melisha Kaur has applied for 2,500 jobs and been called for interview just six times. Could racial bias have something to do with it? On day three of our special report on London’s young jobless, we reveal that ethnic minority unemployment has reached Third World levels.

Melisha Kaur took out a piece of paper with her photo and a nametag that said: “Unemployed dead-ender — No future”. The east Londoner who left school with three A-levels (A-C) and eight good GCSEs was trying to distil “how it feels to be unemployed for over a year”. “That’s my self-portrait,” she said. “Nineteen years old, part of the generation destroyed by unemployment.”

There was a hint of anger in her voice. She sat down, composed herself, and launched into her story. “Since I left sixth form, I have applied for over 2,500 jobs. I apply every day. I wake up at 8am, get on my laptop and start making online applications, ringing employers, and taking my CV into stores. I am very methodical about it and aim for 10 a day, including weekends. So far, in 13 months, I’ve had six interviews but no jobs.”

Melisha comes across as an articulate, eminently employable young woman, but when she did get her first interview — for an office assistant in social media — she was told that she “had all the skills they wanted but wasn’t outgoing enough”. It seemed an odd reason, especially as Melisha is naturally outgoing.

“That interview was my first glimmer of success after six months of trying and it felt like a light at the end of a very dark tunnel,” she said. “I was hugely disappointed to lose out, especially for such a weird reason.”

Melisha, born in London to British parents of Indian descent, had never considered that racist attitudes might explain her risible lack of success in the job market until she heard a radio programme on the Asian Network reporting that young Asians suffered among the highest unemployment in London. “That’s when I began to think it may not just be me,” she said.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the unemployment rates among black and Pakistani Londoners aged 16-24 has reached Third World levels of 44 per cent, more than double the 19 per cent jobless rate of young whites. For black men the unemployment rate rises even higher, to 55.5 per cent, according to the Runnymede Trust, which reports this figure has almost doubled since 2008. “There does not seem to be a clear plan that seeks to address the particular problems that people from black and minority ethnic communities may be facing,” it says.

For these young Londoners, living in London is much like living in Greece or Spain, the basket cases of Europe, where youth unemployment is 53 per cent. Even former employment minister Chris Grayling has admitted that youth unemployment is “a social and economic timebomb”.

On day three of our exposé of youth unemployment in London, we ask: Is there evidence of racial bias in the job market?

A damning report by the Department for Work and Pensions sheds some light on the subject. It shows that people with white names are 74 per cent more likely to get called for an interview following a job application than candidates with an ethnic minority name, despite the two candidates having exactly the same qualifications. Their report, “A test for racial discrimination in recruitment practice in British cities”, involved submitting job applications from fictional white and ethnic minority applicants with equivalent qualifications for advertised vacancies across Britain in order to determine the extent of racial discrimination in the labour market.

It revealed that “a high level of racial discrimination” existed “across the board”, with ethnic minority candidates having to submit nearly twice as many job applications as white candidates to achieve the same level of success. Discrimination persisted across gender, though it was noticeably higher for males. “High numbers of candidates were denied access to a range of jobs in a range of sectors as a result of having a name associated with an ethnic minority background,” the 2009 report concluded.

Shadow employment minister Stephen Timms believes that we need to level the playing field and that the Government should lead on this by imposing blind sifting for job applications in all Civil Service, governmental departments and public sector organisations.

 “We have submitted a parliamentary question to all government departments to ask which ones use blind sifting on CVs,” he said. “We do not yet have all the data, but the position that is emerging is very patchy with clear saints and sinners. Some departments — like Justice and Energy and Climate Change — do not use blind sifting, but the Home Office and departments for International Development, Transport and Women and Equalities do. We think it should be mandatory across the board.”

Mr Timms, the MP for East Ham, added: “What’s so tragic is that the talents of people from ethnic minority communities are being wasted and social cohesion is being undermined. The Olympics has not produced the transformation in youth unemployment we hoped for and need. The Government needs to act urgently for all our youth. Jobs are the key to their prosperity.”

A report this week by MPs on the Work and Pensions Committee concluded that “action is required to address disproportionately high youth unemployment rates among some minority ethnic groups, in particular young black men” and that the Government’s Youth Contract is “inadequate and insufficient” to address this. For Melisha, who lives on a Tower Hamlets council estate with her mother, a part-time midwife’s assistant, there are precious few allies to count on. “From time to time, Jobcentre Plus give me a list of vacancies, but lots of the time they’re useless,” she said. “I’d ring up and the job would be gone or frozen or require qualifications and experience I didn’t have.

“The jobcentre’s answer to everything is to just ‘keep applying’. They tell you that if you stop, all your hard work will be for nothing. So getting a job has become my full-time job. My dream job would be in journalism in digital media, but I am also a dancer and so I have applied for jobs like choreographer’s assistant, as well as sales assistant and office admin posts.

“At the jobcentre, you are surrounded by people living in poverty. It makes you feel like you will never escape. But it is hard too, sitting at home on your own day after day, sending off applications, and mostly getting auto-responses to say you’ve not been successful or worse, no response at all.

“I worked hard to get my A-levels because I thought the skills would benefit me and keep me out of this circumstance, really. To be honest, I thought I’d get a job within a month. I honestly don’t know why I haven’t got a job. In 99 per cent of cases, there is no reason given for your rejection. 

I know people with lesser qualifications than me that already have jobs. If my failure is because of racist bias, it’s something that shouldn’t be ignored.

“My mum is in her fifties and still working — I feel guilty because I should be in a job earning money and taking care of her so she can ease back a bit. I want to make her proud of me. I never thought that one day I would become an unemployed dead-ender.”

Source: London Evening Standard, David Cohen, 21^st September 2012

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/work/if-my-failure-to-get-a-job-is-because-of-racial-bias-it-shouldnt-be-ignored-8163129.html

Plight of the Young Jobless – Part 7

Hidden cost of youth unemployment is depression and poor physical health.

For thousands of young people the brutal reality of life without a job is the start of a spiral into depression, anxiety and ill health.

GP Jackie Applebee works at the Tredegar practice in Tower Hamlets, an Olympic borough which has one of the highest rates of youth unemployment in the capital. One teenage girl treated by Dr Applebee applied for 18 jobs without success and the impact on her mental health was “devastating”.

“We have many young unemployed people registered with us and the most overwhelming thing for them is a sense of worthlessness,” she said. “They leave school with expectations but their dreams come to nothing. They get depressed and that leads to inertia. You see people with low mood and an inability to see a future.”

Counselling and crisis intervention services are one solution but “ultimately most people just want a job”.

At the Bromley by Bow Centre, doctors don’t prescribe anti-depressants to out-of-work young people.

Instead, they refer them for training courses which, says GP Sam Everington, can be “the most important thing you can do” to improve their physical and mental health — especially when 16 per cent of unemployed people in the area have never worked and more than a third are long-term unemployed. He said: “If you’re sitting at home watching TV that’s not going to improve your mindset and you’re not going to do enough exercise.”

Dr Everington added: “It’s a disaster in the long term: the longer you’re unemployed, the harder it is to get employment. If your mood goes then you won’t eat healthily. Alcohol is a big risk for this age group.”

Cardiologist Aseem Malhotra said that the link between social deprivation, unemployment and poor physical and mental health is “undisputed”. He added: “There’s strong evidence that the unemployed are more likely, through boredom and low self-esteem, to indulge in excessive alcohol consumption and smoke. If the government and those with means to help do not take this situation seriously then we will all be worse off with devastating costs to the NHS and the taxpayer.”

A report by the Prince’s Trust shows that 48 per cent of young people aged 16 to 25 not in work claim that being jobless has triggered problems such as self-harm and insomnia.

The 2010 Macquarie youth index study showed that the longer they don’t have a job, the more damaging the impact on their mental and physical health. Young people are twice as likely to self-harm or suffer panic attacks after a year of unemployment.

Without opportunities such as apprenticeships and meaningful training schemes, then increasing numbers of young people will end up “feeling dejected and isolated” according to social enterprise Turning Point, which provides health and social care services including mental health support.'

Lord Adebowale, Turning Point’s chief executive, said the pressure on health services will increase unless action is taken now.

“Unemployment is a public health issue; barriers to employment are barriers to health,” he said. 

“We’re storing up problems that will cost this country dear in the future in mental health costs alone.”

There are physical costs as well. Professor Peter Goldblatt, deputy director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity, said: “In the long term, the effects of unemployment include health conditions such as heart disease and cancer which is linked to the kind of food you eat. Potentially it’s devastating.”

Source: London Evening Standard, David Cohen, 21^st September 2012

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/work/hidden-cost-of-youth-unemployment-is-depression-and-poor-physical-health-8163179.html

Plight of the Young Jobless – Part 6

The young men of Hackney’s riot-hit Pembury Estate lack the role models and education to help them find work. They told the Standard of their feelings of anger and frustration.

The Pembury Estate in Hackney usually makes the headlines for the wrong reasons. Last summer, at the height of the riots, residents watched as a crowd of about 300 barricaded their mansion blocks with burning debris. It was here that a police car, containing a policeman, was set on fire. This is the home of the Pembury Boys, one of London’s most notorious gangs.

Speak to the young residents and there are a lot of things that they are unhappy about. But all their problems — from troubled police relations to their own feelings of helplessness — are really symptoms of unemployment. If middle class university graduates cannot find jobs, imagine what it’s like if you grew up here.

“Most of the time, people don’t even want your CV,” said Cain, a bright, articulate 20-year-old, who was once told that his BTEC in media studies might get him somewhere. “I’ve tried for apprenticeships. I’ve tried to do projects with charities. I’ve been doing voluntary work. They’ve been telling me: ‘If you work on this, then we’ll get you a job.’ They sell dreams — but when it comes down to it, they don’t do nothing to help.”

Cain, bored and frustrated, is typical of the young men here. He did want to work in the media but now he is no longer fussy. Any job will do. “There’s thousands like me,” he said. “Out of all the people that I grew up with, I don’t know anyone that’s in a steady job. A couple have got maybe a little job in retail, but no one’s building a career for themselves. It’s not like they sold it to us in school. Get your grades, build a career, life’s going to be good. It’s a lie. A lot of people round here are living day-to-day. You can’t really think about the future. You’re thinking: How am I going to eat?”

So soon after the Olympics were supposed to help regenerate Hackney, there is little to cheer on an autumn night in the Pembury. We gather around a bench in the children’s playground, surrounded on all sides by the same looming buildings. Another youth walks past, and seeing me, hisses at Cain and his friends for “snitching”. But they want to talk.

“Right now, the Government is just making rich people richer and poor people poorer,” said Kevin, 18. Daniel, 20, thought that the Olympics might provide opportunities in construction. “That’s my thing. I’ve applied for the jobs. I’ve got the qualifications that they’ve been asking for on the ads — but they haven’t got back to me. I don’t see any reason.”

Cain had similar hopes for London 2012. He applied for SIA security training through the government-backed Free 2 Learn scheme (“the worst-run organisation in Britain”). After three months of waiting for his certificate, the opportunity passed.

“I finally got onto the course and then they told us that the Army would be doing all the jobs. Because [the security contractor G4S] didn’t recruit enough staff. That’s the whole reason I started the course. It’s a joke, man.” Cain refers to a lot of things as a “joke”. “How much did we spend on the Olympics? Nine billion? When you’ve got so much poverty in a first world country, that’s too much.”

The laughter, falling round the playground, sounds dark and hollow.

They all feel that education ill-equipped them for work. Daniel says his first school, Homerton, was like a jail. “Look what their youths grow up to be — murderers.” And when he moved to Lammas School in Waltham Forest he learned even less. “Tere it was just copying — it wasn’t really learning. They’d put all the answers on the board.”

Cain agrees. He briefly lived with his mother in New Zealand and was shocked at how far behind he was by their standards. “I’m not confident in my writing, or in maths. I should have been taught these things. In other places they’re learning these things.” He now worries about how to put a CV together. “I don’t even know what it’s supposed to look like.”

There are organisations trying hard to help. Cain has secured an interview for a security job through the Hackney Council for Voluntary Services. The Peabody Trust has an onsite Digital Learning Centre which helped 15 young people (16-24-year-olds) from the estate into work last year.

However, the endemic problem is the fact that there are few people they can call on informally for advice, in the way young middle class people take for granted.

“The only older people we see here are the ones that have turned to drugs, or alcoholics,” said Cain. “They’re still here from 15 years ago, doing exactly the same thing: fighting and chatting s**t. Say there were people here with good jobs, earning good money — do you think any of the young ones would want to turn to crime?”

His own father died when he was young. “To this day, I don’t have a male in my life who I’ve watched building anything, who has gone down the right road and it’s paid off for him. We’re just out here, watching each other.”

“That’s why most of these kids turn to drugs,” added Kevin. “Drugs does more for people than jobs do.”

They are reluctant to talk about crime — “every time this estate’s in the media, it’s always crime, crime, crime” — but even for those who are determined to avoid the drugs gangs, a criminal record is easy to come by. They show me camera-phone footage of a police raid the night before, during which Kevin was arrested.

He protests his innocence. “Everything had been calm, everyone was just chilling. Now I’ve got a court case for assault. This is why it’s hard to get jobs. People come down here looking for a reaction. They get a reaction — we get a criminal record.”

Kevin is the most qualified of the group. He counts himself lucky to have been to Mossbourne, regarded as a model inner-city school, where he got an A-level in business studies. He hopes to build a career in business or banking, but in the meantime, he is “90 per cent sure” of securing a job at a branch of Costa Coffee. Now he is worried that his court case will put even that small opening under threat.

“I’m worried that anything in my future will be under threat, to be honest. One criminal charge can give a bad impression, and they won’t know the full story. I just don’t want it to f**k up my life.”

“I do think it’s a trap here. Everyone ends up going to jail,” added Daniel.

I ask what it would take to get them out of that trap.

“If they went into estates, showed youths avenues out of there, apprenticeships,” said Cain. “If the Government even went to companies and said ‘We want this many placements’ this year. If they helped just one person, there probably would be a bit of hope.”

He becomes agitated, addressing my Dictaphone directly: “Please get us a job!” The others laugh. He is sincere. “If employers are out there, looking for some hard workers, come down to Pembury Estate. Let the youth know that you’ve got jobs going. Trust me, you’ll get as many good workers as you need. Everyone round here wants to do better.

“They want to work, they want to provide for their families, they want to leave. No one wants to be on benefits for the rest of their lives.”

NB: Some names have been changed.

Source: London Evening Standard, David Cohen, 21^st September 2012

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/work/i-tried-working-for-charities-they-sell-you-dreams-of-a-job-but-then-dont-do-nothing-to-help-8163230.html

Plight of the Young Jobless – Part 5

One young Londoner spent three years getting an architecture degree — only to face a choice between menial work and joblessness. On the second day of our special report, we highlight the plight of graduates forced to clean lavatories for a living. Our investigation shows 73 young people are fighting for every graduate job. We reveal that the rate of graduate unemployment has almost doubled in the last five years, creating a climate of despair among students who are already leaving university tens of thousands of pounds in debt.

Architecture graduate Debo Ajose-Adeogun has a spectacular panoramic view of the Olympic Park from the top of his high-rise block in Stratford. The 24-year-old Londoner has watched this part of Newham be transformed from a neglected backwater to the fastest developing part of the capital.

Seven years ago, when London won its Games bid, he saw an opportunity to be part of the regeneration buzz and decided to become an architect.

“I thought that with the Olympics coming to my home borough, there would be plenty of work for a young, hungry draughtsman,” he said.

He took out a student loan, knuckled down and worked hard. Three years later Debo returned to Newham with a degree in architecture from Birmingham University, eager for a job. “It was exciting,” he said, though taking his degree had left him £18,000 in debt.

“I had watched the Olympic Stadium being built and every time an office, hotel or apartment block started up I found out the developer’s name and applied for a job. I thought it was just a matter of time before they took someone with my qualifications.”

But Debo, who came to London from Nigeria as a boy, made little headway. In the last three years, apart from a fixed-term contract as a housing association officer that lasted eight months, he has been unable to find work and has been unemployed for two years.

“I’ve made more than 250 applications for an entry-level position as a designer, architect’s assistant, surveyor or something in the housing construction sector but all I’ve managed is three unsuccessful interviews,” he said.

“It’s demoralising. After your 10th rejection you redouble your efforts, after your 50th you doubt yourself, after your 150th you feel worthless.

“Recently I took a job as a part-time sales assistant with Evans women’s clothing store in the old Stratford Mall. It’s menial, minimum wage work but it’s better than nothing. I can’t believe I did three years of university for this but what are my choices? I would rather do some work than nothing.”

Debo’s dilemma is increasingly common. On day two of our special investigation into youth unemployment in London, we report that the number of graduates forced to take menial jobs in “elementary occupations” — as cleaners, labourers, shelf stackers, hotel porters and rubbish collectors — has doubled in the last five years.

And as the Higher Education Statistics Agency reports, these are not even the worst-off graduates. Nine per cent of full-time graduates, 20,620 in all, are still unemployed six months after completing their degrees, compared with just over half that in 2007.

A total of 120,000 young adults aged 16 to 24 are unemployed in London — or one in four, which is three times the jobless rate of older Londoners. If there is one stand-out statistic that captures how tough it is to get a job, it is this: in 2012 there were 73 applications on average for every advertised graduate job vacancy — a 150 per cent rise on the position five years ago, according to the Association of Graduate Recruiters.

The consequence is that many graduates are forced to compete for menial jobs that would typically be filled by people with no qualifications.

Anthropology graduate Hannah Simmons, 22, is a case in point. Six months ago she applied for a summer job with a large cleaning company that had contracts for Wimbledon and the Olympics. “I was called in for an interview and they told me that they were recruiting toilet cleaners,” said Hannah, from Ealing, who went to Manchester University.

“I told them I was up for that and showed them my qualifications but was quite taken aback when they grilled me on my future plans. I thought, this is a job for a toilet cleaner, right?

“Afterwards I never heard back. I felt angry because I had spent money travelling to the interview by train and they didn’t even have the grace to let me know.

“Two months later I got a call to say, ‘Sorry, we haven’t chosen you but you are on the list as a reserve toilet cleaner. We’ll call if somebody pulls out.’

“I was gobsmacked. I thought to myself, what have things come to? Do I need a PhD to work as a toilet cleaner in London?

“As it happened, somebody pulled out and I did clean toilets for the Wimbledon fortnight. The extraordinary thing is that almost all of my fellow workers were also university graduates. We worked 15-hour days. I would leave home at 6am and get back at 11pm, totally exhausted. The job market is so tight. I have now decided to go and try my luck in Australia.”

Other new graduates also report that they have been forced abroad. Bradley Bloom, a Londoner with an architecture degree from Glasgow University, told how he secured a job on a new housing development, only for the project to run out of money before it began.

“I arrived on my first day to find them packing up and was told that the finance had fallen through and with it my job,” he said.

After searching for months, 22-year-old Bradley finally found another job — in Holland. “I have grasped it with both hands,” he said.

“If I want to work at what I was trained for and develop my career, I have to leave London and go abroad. Most of my classmates have been unable to find any work in the profession. My only other friend who has got work is in the same position. He got a job on a building project in Berlin.”

Back in Debo’s nine-storey tower block, 40 per cent of the 210 young adults who live there are unemployed, according to the estate’s housing officer Tracey McGurl.

They range from graduates to young people who left school with just a few GCSEs. “It is an incredibly tough time to be young and coming on to the job market in London — maybe the worst ever,” said Ms McGurl.”

What does it feel like for Debo to be unemployed — or under-employed — for more than two years and live among that level of unemployment?

His one-bedroom flat on the fourth floor provides an insight into his state of mind. On his desk — among his books on Le Corbusier, Bauhaus and graphic design — is a well-thumbed leaflet that says: “How to get up and go when you’re feeling low”.

Debo, who lived with his father and aunt after he finished university, said: “I suffered depression when I couldn’t find a job. My dad is a security guard and he couldn’t understand why I didn’t have a job when I have a degree.

“I’d wake up in the morning and be in front of my computer updating my CV and applying for jobs online and he’d come home at the end of the day and see me in the same clothes, in exactly the same position and he’d get incredibly angry with me.

“We got into a lot of heated arguments, with dad thinking I wasn’t applying for jobs when in fact I was on the computer 24/7. He made me feel even more of a failure and eventually I broke down and had to leave. I still feel a lot of shame that I am a graduate and yet still effectively unemployed.”

Giving the interview took courage. At first he wanted to be anonymous but then he agreed to use his real name and be photographed. “I decided to put my embarrassment to one side and tell my story in full because I think everyone should know the hell that we young people are going through,” he said. “The education system gave me a dream and for three years I hardly went out because I worked to make that dream come true. I didn’t find university easy, in fact, just the opposite.

“To have worked so hard and sacrificed so much and have nothing to show for it is hard to take. The dream that was promised to us has not been delivered. We have been shut out.”

Despite being knocked back, what is extraordinary about Debo is that he refuses to give up. 

Now the Olympics are over, he is hopeful that the Olympic Park redevelopment will bring a new raft of job opportunities — and that this time a hungry young architecture graduate can be part of its legacy.

“I’m a naturally optimistic person, that’s why I keep trying,” he said.

“Most people think youngsters who are unemployed don’t aspire to much, but it’s not true. We aspire to a lot and want to do the best we can. All I ask for is a chance to show what I can do, to make my mark.”

Source: London Evening Standard, David Cohen, 20^th September 2012

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/work/special-report-a-degree-in-architecture--but-all-i-can-get-are-menial-jobs-8159842.html

Plight of the Young Jobless – Part 4

Firms slow to sign up for £1bn scheme to give young people jobs.

With a price tag of £1  billion, the Youth Contract was billed as the ultimate sledgehammer to attack one of the most stubborn problems in society: youth unemployment.

Announced last autumn, it brought together a clutch of the most successful schemes ever devised to help young people into jobs, including personalised training and wage subsidies of more than £2,000 a placement.

But how has it fared since Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg promised to “make sure every unemployed young person starts earning or learning again before long-term damage is done”?

The verdicts from employers, unions and MPs are mixed. The biggest fear is that the Government’s target of creating 430,000 employment “opportunities” (not the same as full-time jobs) could prove wildly ambitious.

Although former employment minister Chris Grayling wrote to 350,000 employers, the message does not seem to have got through. A recent survey by EEF, the manufacturers’ organisation, found that none of its members who answered were taking part.

A third had not even heard of the Youth Contract, while nearly half knew about it but had no plans to take part. Only one in five was considering whether to take up the offer.

Labour has accused the Government of being secretive about take-up figures. Two weeks ago, Liam Byrne, the shadow employment minister, asked in Parliament how many firms had received money. Employment minister Mark Hoban replied: “I expect the first set of official statistics on the wage incentive to be available from early 2013.”

The incentives are real enough. A third of the £1  billion is to go on incentives — a £2,275 subsidy for employers who take people off the dole queue, a £1,500 grant for small firms taking on apprentices and £2,200 for businesses who hire Neets — teenagers not in education, employment or training.

The rest would go into intensive efforts to help young individuals shape up for full-time work and match them with employers looking for talent.

But the problem is enormous and has defeated many previous efforts. Youth unemployment has not fallen below 500,000 in the last 30 years. When the downturn hit, it rose twice as fast as in other age groups. The most recent figures showed that more than a third of 16- and 17-year-olds are unemployed, and a fifth of 18- to 24-year-olds. In London, 120,000 16- to 24-year-olds are unemployed.

Yesterday, a report by the cross-party Work and Pensions select committee put the Youth Contract scheme on probation. It welcomed its objectives but expressed concern that it could fail to help those youngsters most in need, who would only be taken on if employers were give a bigger cash incentive.

It warned that some local authorities were not fully engaged, which meant the scheme could fall short. Employers also complained of a “patchy” quality of service, but they did like the simple two-page application form. The jury is out on whether Youth Contract will be a success. What is not in doubt is that London youngsters need help now.

A government spokesman said: “Youth unemployment is a real challenge for young people, their families and the Government. It’s good to hear the committee’s welcome for the Youth Contract, but we’re not complacent about the scale of the challenge.

“Thousands of young people have already benefited from measures in the Youth Contract and over the next three years the package will give hundreds of thousands more the chance to earn or learn. As we promised when we launched it, we will review the measures later this year to ensure they are having maximum impact.”

Views from Fulham Jobcentre: ‘It’s a struggle to find work, not enough help is available':-

Marie Kidwell, 43

Lawyer and mother of two

“Young people do need more help to find jobs. Probably too many go to university. The Government can help to change the emphasis away from university qualifications.”

Joanna Mrabet, 24

Trying to set up an online business

“Not enough help is available. There do not seem to be any funds for young people who want to get on through hard work. Youngsters with ideas should be supported.”

David Bachinski, 20

Unemployed for 10 months

“I would really like to work in the retail sector but it is very tough. I am getting some interviews but actually securing a job is another thing entirely.”

Robert Wiggins, 37

Youth worker

“We need to give young people opportunities and job prospects or they can go to the wrong side of the tracks. I am running a boxing programme for youngsters and they respond to that.”

Anna Blunden, 22

Travel firm employee

“A lot of my friends have struggled to get jobs after leaving university. Youth unemployment doesn’t explain totally why there have been riots but it does contribute to problems.”

Tyrone Rhule, 29

Unemployed

“I just can’t find work and it is so frustrating. I have been a youth worker but there is nothing around at the moment and I am finding it a real struggle.”

Source: London Evening Standard, David Cohen, 20^th September 2012

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/work/firms-slow-to-sign-up-for-1bn-scheme-to-give-young-people-jobs-8159803.html

Plight of the Young Jobless - Part 3

Mark Fordham was almost 12 when London won the Olympic bid but he remembers that time for another reason — the sudden death of his father from a heart attack.

Mark had been an outstanding primary school pupil, achieving well above the national level in his SATs but the loss of his father hit him hard and his schooling suffered. Three years later, just as he was getting back on his feet, his mother broke the devastating news that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

“My mum was head down on the table, crying, in a really bad state,” recalled Mark. “She started chemotherapy and radiation and a series of injections to shrink the tumour and I had to go with her to hospital to learn how to inject the medicine.

“Mum later had the tumour surgically removed, but she was weak and close to death. I was terrified that I was about to become an orphan and had no idea how I would look after my 10-year-old sister. I had my GCSEs to worry about, too. I was passionate about computers and dreamed of becoming an electronic engineer, but for the next two years I put all that to one side and became my mum’s full-time carer.”

Mark ran the household — shopping for groceries, cleaning their 6th floor council flat in Holborn, paying the bills out of income support — and attended school erratically.

“In my GCSE exams, the few I wrote, I had one question repeating in my head in the examinations hall: what will I do without any parents? I found it impossible to focus.

“But putting my mum first worked because she recovered and now, thankfully, she’s healthy, though I failed every exam and I left school without a single GCSE. At first I struggled with my confidence, but I had tremendous drive to get on the first rung of the ladder and start making a living. I made up to a dozen applications a day, online at websites like Gumtree, InRetail and Reed, and in person at Jobcentres. I would also apply at stores like Sainsbury’s and Iceland.” In the last three years, Mark, who is now 18 and living with his cousin in Beckton, estimates that he’s made “several thousand” job applications and been interviewed “40 or 50 times”. “Some interviews didn’t go well. I was nervous, I had no work experience, sometimes I would feel that I’d said the wrong thing and clam up. But sometimes I did well and got my hopes up only to never hear from them again.”

He said that Jobcentres, rather than assisting, were “a nightmare”. “If you call them, they don’t pick up. When you go in, the jobs they suggest are useless and never work out. I’ve never got a single interview through the jobcentre, but they make you waste your time signing on once a fortnight and talking to personal advisers who don’t help.”

This year Mark decided to take a pre-apprenticeship level-2 course in IT as well as English and maths GCSE-equivalents as a step towards improving his qualifications. “I’m a natural whiz at electronics,” he said. “I hoped it would bring me closer to my dream job — electronics engineer at a computer or mobile phone company.”

Recently Mark had a small breakthrough, securing a short-term work placement, but it will soon be over and he will have to look for work again.

“I am bright, enthusiastic, hard working — I’ve just had a few bad breaks,” he said. “I just need somebody to give me a chance.”

Source: London Evening Standard, David Cohen, 19th September 2012

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/work/marks-story-im-a-whiz-at-electronics-bright-and-hardworking-i-just-need-somebody-to-give-me-a-chance-8156449.html

Plight of the Young Jobless - Part 2

Jubbed Ahmed, 20, from Shadwell wants to be a graphic designer but has only a few weeks’ experience in a call centre and no references.

Five job applications a day is what Jubbed Ahmed aims for. Every day the 20-year-old forces himself to sit down in his council flat on the Tarling Estate next to the Shadwell DLR station and try again.

Sometimes he despairs that he will never make any headway. “I send out application after application and I hear nothing back. After a few hundred times, you think, did I actually apply for that job? Or did I imagine it?

“You never get the chance to speak to a real person. And you don’t know if what you’ve sent has even been read. You’re living in limbo-land, and after a while it knocks your self-esteem. It’s hard to take so much rejection.” Three years ago, when Jubbed left school with four GCSEs, he immediately got a job at a call centre with IFF Research, working nights on the minimum wage.

“I was given a list of people to call and nine out of 10 would just put down the phone on me,” he said. “It was incredibly boring and frustrating and I left after five weeks. My sister is a teacher’s assistant and she loves her job. I always wanted to be a graphic designer, so I thought I would look for something better for myself.”

Three years and hundreds of applications later, mostly for retail sales jobs, Jubbed is still looking. “They ask for my experience and my references, but all I have is a few weeks at a call centre. That is my stumbling block.

“My estate is full of unemployed young people like me. I am not kidding when I say that about 80 per cent of the young people on our estate are unemployed. Some deal drugs, most hang around on street corners doing nothing. There’s a general feeling of despair. I have never got involved with drugs, mainly because I don’t want to upset my mum, but I see that for some people it becomes an alternative way of making a living when there are no conventional jobs.” Like Mark Fordham, Jubbed has done a pre-apprenticeship training to improve his skills, but he can’t go further without an employer stepping up to the plate.

“I feel like I am living in the land of the unemployed,” he said. “All around me I see young people wasting away. We are a generation of people who are not working.

“I know people who are graduates who can’t get jobs, so what chance have we got? It is hard to keep your dreams. It is hard to keep hope alive.”

Source: London Evening Standard, David Cohen, 19th September 2012

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/work/jubbeds-story-i-feel-like-im-living-in-the-land-of-the-unemployed-all-around-me-i-see-young-people-wasting-away-8156468.html

Plight of the Young Jobless - Part 1

Special report: a generation of young Londoners with no job, no prospects and no hope.

The capital is in the grip of a youth unemployment crisis with one in four out of work. In a three-day investigation starting today, the Standard reveals the scale of young joblessness and its cost to individuals and society. Here we focus on three people who are desperate for work.

Sana Babar's break seemed to come quickly. A couple of months after leaving sixth form, she applied for a sales assistant job at Harrods — they screened her over the phone, liked what they heard and called her in for a group interview.

“I was really excited,” recalled Sana. “There were 20 of us and we had to introduce ourselves, say what skills we brought to the job and what we’d do if Harrods gave us a £1,000 voucher. I was the youngest — the others were in their twenties and thirties — and the second last to speak.

“When my turn came, I stood up and said: ‘My name is Sana, I’m confident, I’m motivated.’ Then I paused and got stuck for about four or five seconds. Everybody was staring at me and I suddenly felt overwhelmed and started to panic. The woman from Harrods was at the front manically writing down what people said and she sat, pen poised, not looking up, and I thought, oh my God, I better talk some more.

”I said, ‘Um, I’m bubbly, approachable, good at talking to people at all levels, good at talking to customers’. Again, I froze. I looked out at the blank faces — they had all been so confident in their delivery with real experience to draw on, but this was my first interview and all I had was five days’ work experience at Clarks Shoes.

“I tried to hold my hands by my side, not to fidget to show I wasn’t nervous, but it was obvious I was bombing. Then I said that with the gift voucher, I would buy my mum a Louis Vuitton bag and one woman piped up that she preferred the Gucci, and a few people laughed, and it put me at my ease.”

But Sana never got through to the final round of interviews. In the 15 months since, the 19-year-old from Tower Hamlets has diligently applied for a staggering 3,000 jobs, an average of 10 a day, and in that time has secured just four interviews and no employment. Not one of these firms has ever taken the time to give her any feedback as to why her application failed. “It is a process,” she said, “that is utterly soul destroying.”

Her plight, an Evening Standard investigation reveals, is all too common. Youth unemployment in our capital city has soared to crisis proportions not seen for a generation. One in four young people aged 16 to 24 is unemployed rising to 27 per cent among young men — a total of 120,000 in all — and nearly triple the average London unemployment rate of 8.9 per cent.

Together with Yorkshire, London suffers, at 25 per cent, the worst youth unemployment rate in the UK, according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics.  There is no doubt that our young people have borne the brunt of the economic crisis. Among London’s black and Asian youth, the problem is far worse. Nowhere is the issue more acute than in the Olympic boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Newham, which have among the highest number of young people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance in the capital.

As the euphoria of the Olympics and Paralympics fades, the promises made to win these Games on behalf of London’s youth needs to be examined afresh. It was 30 school children from east London who accompanied Lord  Coe to Singapore in 2005, so that he could ask for the Games “on behalf of the youth of today, the athletes of tomorrow and the Olympians of the future”.

But those school children of 2005 —now young adults — have every right to feel betrayed. The hype that the Games would “inspire a generation” and transform lives is at odds with the devastating impact that long-term joblessness brings including depression, social exclusion, and crushed self-esteem, especially to young people who have no previous track record of success to fall back on.

The Standard has spoken to dozens of unemployed young people, as well as experts and politicians, to reveal what it is really like to be young, unemployed and in limbo. In an exposé of the crisis starting today, we tell the shocking stories of life at the coal-face, and we address a key question: Why is the unemployment rate of young people (16 to 24) more than three times that of older people (25 to 49)?

The latest research from The Work Foundation, an independent think tank, indicates it is not age, per se, that is the problem — young people tend to be better at IT and at picking up foreign languages.

Rather it comes down to one critical factor — lack of experience. “Young people,” they report, “find themselves caught in a classic Catch 22 situation: they cannot get a job without work experience, and they cannot get work experience without a job.” Measures that help young people bridge the experience gap, such as apprenticeship schemes, could be a key part of the solution.

Country-wide, just over one million young people remain jobless. The Government’s £1 billion Youth Contract to address “the missing million” was introduced this year to offer employers small cash incentives to get young people into work.

A report released today by the Work and Pensions committee concludes that while it is a step in the right direction, it is “insufficient on its own, given the scale of the problem”. What is clear is that we need some can-do urgency from the Government and the private sector if we are to avert economic and social catastrophe.

The projected cost to our economy of youth unemployment over the next decade is estimated at £28 billion. Meanwhile, the personal “scarring effect” to each youth who remains jobless ratchets up.

According to the Audit Commission, unemployed young adults are three times more likely to suffer depression than youngsters with jobs.

Sana is a case in point. “I hear about people my age with similar GCSE qualifications — I got four Cs — getting jobs as supervisors and I think, what’s wrong with me? Is it my CV? The way I dress? The way I talk? I start to doubt myself and get stressed and depressed.”

Recently Sana hit a bad patch. She stopped going out with her friends and wanted to take anti-depressants, but her mother got her through it.

“Dad hasn’t been around for 10 years and I have watched my mother dig deep. She used to work in a Hackney factory making ballet shoes, and now she works as a night-duty security guard to support me and my two sisters. Mum is my inspiration.

“If she can do it, I can too. I tell that to myself every single day, just to keep going.”

Source: London Evening Standard, David Cohen, 19th September 2012

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/work/special-report-a-generation-of-young-londoners-with-no-job-no-prospects-and-no-hope-8156404.html