Feature Article

‘Nobody wants to give me a chance'

It is easy with email to fire off 100 job applications in a day or two but it does not take long for young job-seekers to realise that in many cases employers are treating their carefully worded CVs as so much spam. These newcomers to the jobs market, with all their hopes for adulthood, are experi­encing bitter disappointment.

Twenty-four-year-old Amma moved to London initially to study, but since graduating last year has not been able to find a job. She competes with hundreds of others for each available vacancy.

"I'm always having to prove myself," says Amma. "I know I am good enough, that I can do the job I apply for, but nobody wants to give me a chance. It's difficult to stay positive and very, very easy to become depressed."

Like it or not, in today's society it is our jobs that help to give us a social identity and help define our place in the world among our friends, family and peers. Writing in the  Birmingham Post before leaving the Midlands, Archbishop Vincent Nichols reflected on the importance of work, saying: "There is something in the work we do which is quite central to who we are. That's why, in casual conversation, we often ask: ‘Well, what do you do?' That's why unemployment is so devastating. Work is an expression of ourselves. Work gives us the opportunity to contribute, to be counted in, and to get something back - not only a wage, but respect and esteem."

Without a job a young person's identity is threatened. They can become demoralised, and over time can develop a lack of aspiration. His or her long-term prospects are threatened by the gaps in their CV. Graduates are more likely to increase their debt than pay it off. Dependency on parents increases and that all-important milestone of reaching independence is pushed further into the distance - and with it any true grasp of adulthood.

Luke, from South Wales, studied film and media at college, and left at 18 to find a job within the media. For the first two years things went well but in the last 12 months he has effectively become unemployed, although he likes to think of himself as underemployed in an attempt to keep a positive outlook.

"Since the recession really took hold, the meetings and interest have stopped, and work has dried up," says Luke. "I'm applying for anything that I can find, including short-term jobs and admin roles. It's extremely demoral­ising. I now seem to have lost my enthusiasm for most things, and when motivation is hard to find, the little that I have to do seems to take a long time. I get disorganised. There's no structure to my time any more."

Whereas young people who are in work often organise their social life around colleagues, and their leisure time around spending money, the unemployed soon find that their leisure time is solitary, as Luke explains: "Not working is very isolating. Obviously the lack of income is a problem, even though I'm living at home, but to see friends costs money. I find myself weighing up whether I can afford the train ticket into town and the price of the drink."

Perhaps the greatest danger of unemployment and underemployment is isolation. People find that they have fewer and fewer financial means to stay engaged with society. Pope Benedict speaks of this in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate: "One of the deepest forms of poverty a person can experience is isolation." He continues: "Being out of work or dependent on public or private assistance for a prolonged period undermines the freedom and creativity of the person and his family and social relationships, causing great psychological and spiritual suffering. I would like to remind everyone ... that the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is Man, the human person in his or her integrity: Man is the source, the focus and the aim of all economic and social life."

Yet this conviction that the human person is the prime object of the economy is largely absent in Britain, in both the sphere of education and of work. Instead, we are placing incredible pressure on our young to succeed, to get results, to seek wealth and to go into what others deem as worthwhile careers. But to what end? The number achieving top grades at A level increases every year and reflects the outstanding achievements of Britain's teenagers. But it also highlights how we are setting many young people up for disappointment. Even the successful graduates, such as Amma, do not have the future job security that they were told a degree promises.

Wherever young people turn they find pressure to succeed - from their schools, from their parents and from their peers. Catholic schools and families are as much a culprit of this as any other. Wherever we have failed to challenge this unfair pressure on young people, we have effectively legitimised an over-­consumerist society that places the value of success and money over the dignity of humanity.

We are supporting a culture of education and work that places production before people, results before relationships and commodities before community. Society has been telling our young people that they are valued by what they do, achieve, buy and wear. Unable to fulfil these indicators of success any longer, they will quickly become dis­affected, despondent and apathetic.

Furthermore, young people who are approaching working age are beginning to express anxiety about their future, having seen the reality of unemployment and insecurity all around them. They are, in fact, beginning to express the same fear about their future identity, of a lack of meaning and purpose, a fear of not living up to everything that society, school and home says they should achieve. 

Young people's long-term prospects do not look good. Research by the Prince's Trust predicts that one in five of today's GCSE students will be on the dole by the time they are 21.

A Catholic community should have a response for those young people out of work and for those looking to the future with fear and anxiety. Perhaps if the founding principle of Catholic social teaching had not been permitted to lose its importance it might be easier to engage with the challenges at hand. The dignity of work and the rights of workers has been upheld since the nineteenth century as integral to an understanding of what it is to be fully human.

This guiding principle spoke to previous generations of Catholic workers and employers, providing solace to the downhearted not simply in words but also in action. We can point to the famous examples such as Cardinal Manning standing up for the dignity of the dockers in east London, supporting the call for a minimum wage and recognition of unions. We can also point to such things as the Young Christian Workers' (YCW) successful "School to Work" programme which provided advice to school leavers for more than 30 years from the 1950s to the 1980s, preceding any type of career services in schools.

Catholic social teaching can still be put into practice today. Perhaps Catholic employers can support the Government's new campaign Backing Young Britain - an attempt to get the private, public and voluntary sectors providing work opportunities for under-25s. This should help ensure that the young workers who are employed (with government funding attached) are not treated as cheap labour but are afforded the dignity and worth they have as children of God.

Families can support the young jobless workers in their care. Luke reflects that one positive effect of his being out of work has been the improvement in his relationships with his family. "I look to them more often and spend more time with them. They've been my support." If means allow, parents should reach beyond their own unemployed youngsters to their children's friends and peers, many of whom will not be lucky enough to find the support, and relief from isolation, in their own families.

In parishes, individuals need to come together and seek a response to the specific reality of the young jobless in their local communities. I, of course, will advocate that they start a YCW group to help young workers and jobless to get organised. It is still the largest youth movement in the Church and the most effective at reaching the isolated young worker and job-seeker.

But there are other solutions. Parish rooms can be offered to partner organisations working with young people, as an advice centre, or for language support to overseas workers (many a young person never gets through the forms that are supposed to be the gateway to support). There may be opportunities to address the effects of unemployment in more innovative ways such as by starting a parish credit union or a social enterprise.

Community leaders need to emerge from businesses, families and parishes to take a lead in motivating others. To put it another way, in YCW language, take time to see, judge and act.

Britain's wasted young - and what's being done

Young jobless: the seasonally adjusted figure for 16- to 24-year-olds out of work in the UK: 928,000. That's three times higher than the jobless rate of older workers (Dept for Works and Pensions).

New Neets: the number of 16- to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training (Neets) for the second quarter of 2009 in England: 959,000, up from 840,000 for the same quarter last year (Department for Children, Schools and Families). 

Hardest hit: unemployment among under-25s accounted for half of the amount of job losses in the second quarter of this year, pushing up the UK's youth joblessness rate to the highest in Europe.

Ducking the market: there has been a 10 per cent increase in university applications in an attempt to avoid the challenge of finding a job. Yet 60,000 applicants will be denied a place.

Student debt: The Push Student Debt Survey of 2,024 students in England found debts averaged more than £5,000 a year and rising.

Future Jobs Fund: £1 billion is aimed at creating 150,000 jobs. Some of the money will go into Backing Young Britain, an attempt to get the private, public and voluntary sectors providing work opportunities for under 25s.

Apprenticeship Scheme: run by "enterprise tsar" Lord Sugar, this initiative aims to create 400,000 apprenticeships by 2020.

Graduate Talent Pool: the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has launched a Graduate Talent Pool website offering more than 2,000 internships for graduates.

Gap-year scheme: the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is to put £500,000 into helping 500 graduates take 10-week trips organised by Raleigh International.

Trust funds: Young Christian Workers has received more than £86,000 from the Charles Plater Trust for its work with the young jobless.