YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT COULD SPIKE

A British think tank warns that the number of jobless youths could spike to 1.2 million over the next five years as 230,000 16 to 18-year-olds drop school. The think tank Demos will publish a report next month in which it would say the extent of the youth unemployment crisis is being severely underestimated, with the figure to witness an enormous 23 percent increase on the number of youths that are currently unemployed around the country, the Daily Mail reported.

The report will say that the qualifications of those youths who leave education at level 1 or 2 are “inadequate and offer young people little or no protection from unemployment.”

The warning comes on the day new official figures are due to be published, revealing the number of young people considered to be ‘Neets’ – ‘not in education, employment or training.’ The last figures to be published showed that 1,026,000 16 to 24-year-olds were ‘Neet’ in the third quarter of 2010. And unemployment figures published last week showed that 965,000 16 to 24-yearolds are unemployed, depicting the highest number since the record began in 1992.

Demos is warning that the percentages ranging from 10 to 15 were the norm for youth unemployment in the 1990s, but the recession, and a kind of failure in the education system can change the norm figure to 20 percent. “Young people who spend long periods unemployed at the beginning of their careers work less and earn less throughout their working lives,” said report author and Neet expert Jonathan Birdwell. “There is a drought of entry-level jobs meaning the door to work is closed to many young people,” he added. “Those who don’t go to university would normally acquire skills in their first jobs, but the disappearance of these positions means young people are getting hit twice -they get neither a salary nor skills,” said Birdwell.