Youth Unemployment in UK Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Youth Unemployment in UK - Essay Example According to the report, which defines youth as the age between 16 to 24 years, individuals claiming allowances for jobseekers rose from 5,300 to 1.6 million in October 2011. In general, the rate of youth unemployment has gone just past twenty percent, the highest ever recorded since 1992. Some economists have attributed these results to the reeling effects of the 2009 recession to the increase in the number of youths leaving school or university. That is the convectional belief. The government of UK blames the rise in unemployment on the deteriorating job market and the effects of the euro-zone debt crisis. Chris Graylin, employment minister, gave a statement blaming the euro-zone troubles for increasing unemployment rates. Graylin called for the government to help the youth through schemes such as the government initiated work experience and work program that have placed several people out of benefits into workplaces. Lord Oakeshott, a Liberal Democrat, dismisses the ministerâ€⠄¢s view blaming the government policy of cutting spending as reason behind the rise (Shimer, 2010:45). He says that the government has been cutting its spending budget too fast and too far, pushing the rate of borrowing and unemployment high. The recent employment scheme adopted by the government, the New Deal, has the objective of reducing the long-term unemployment rates among older workers and youths. The scheme includes employment training and employment subsidies for the participants. There is need to define unemployment in order to understand the issues of youth unemployment. According to International Labor Organization, unemployment is actively searching for economic employment/ work without success. Some economic critics claim that there are jobs for the youth; it is only that the youth are not willing to work hard and are unreliable. A recent feature in the Telegram by Alasdair Palmer concerning the recent report by ONS, the author of the feature gives an example of emplo yer from a fruit grower company complaining about the lack of English recruits in the region’s labor market (Palmer, 2011:21). The fruit grower has 300 workers in the farm, and only one is English. According to the fruit grower, the jobs are there but the English are not willing to drop the unemployment benefits they enjoy and some request to be paid cash. The author goes ahead and gives another industry where Briton youths are unemployed: bars and restaurants. According to the author, Britons youths are unreliable and rude to customers. An analyst would most likely advocate for abolition of minimum wage or temporary imposition of moratorium on it to create more employment opportunities. Nevertheless, this has not been any successful, at least in research. A research by Institute of Fiscal Studies indicates that the minimum wage system has no direct effect to the level of unemployment. The report raises concerns that withdrawal of the benefits upon taking a job and reduction of the minimum wage rate would result to inability of people to live on the offered amount sustainably (Boeri & Ours, 2008:44). According to Dr Jonathan Wadsworth from London School of Economics, the youth do not lack employment because they are work shy or because of the minimum wage. According to him, the employees are not willing to employ them. Older people already in work positions have accepted pay cuts and pay freeze in order to maintain their jobs. This means that most employees have managed to maintain their job position, resulting to the low rate of unemployment that resulted from the recession. Despite this, the result means that employers have not been absorbing new employees who are traditionally youth. Such policies are the causes of