Youth unemployment nationwide rose by 20,000 last month. Nearly a million people aged 18 to 24 are out of work. 1.16 million are estimated to be Neets – not in employment, education or training. Professor Robin Simmons and Newcastle city councillor Stephen Lambert say we need a radical solution

YOUTH unemployment levels in the country are now higher than 2009 – with the North- East being hit the hardest.

The implications of this are serious, not only for hard-pressed businesses, but for public services and the economy more broadly. Unemployment is often associated with social isolation, ill-health, and other forms of long-term exclusion for the individuals concerned and their families.

However, the ‘scarring effects’ of unemployment are particularly serious for young people. Youth offending, anti-social behaviour and the incidence of early parenthood is significantly higher amongst those who spend significant periods of time classified as Neet (not in education, employment or training).

Research carried out by academics at Huddersfield University not only challenges some of the stereotypes which have built up around youth joblessness, but also offers a range of recommendations for policy-makers concerned with this area.

Now coming to a conclusion, the three year project, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, has a number of important findings. One of these, which doesn’t agree with received wisdom is that nationally 75 per cent of 16 to 18-year olds who are Neet come from a household with at least one parent in work.

The majority of jobless people don’t come from some real or imagined workless underclass, most are Neets for relatively short periods of time (on average 12 weeks). Moreover, whilst generally, Neet youngsters have lower than average qualifications, many actually have a good academic profile. It’s easy to forget that young unemployed graduates or those taking a year out before starting university are officially classified as Neet.

Despite much rhetoric about skills shortages, the harsh reality is that most young people are in fact over-qualified for the jobs available to them. Although pockets of high-skill work do exist in British jobs market, nowadays most new employment – especially that which is available to young people – is in retail, leisure, social care and other parts of the low-skill end of the service sector.

Although some commentators are fond of blaming the poor and unemployed for their own plight, our research has found that most Neet young people are essentially ordinary working-class kids with fairly mainstream attitudes and opinions.

Youth unemployment data for Newcastle illustrates this quite vividly. More than 12 per cent of the city’s youngsters aged 16 to 24 are jobless. Some 18 per cent are classified as Neets.

While affluent wards of the city, such as Gosforth, have Neet rates for 16 and 18-yearolds as low as one per cent, traditional working- class areas such as Benwell, Scotswood and Walker have far higher rates of youth unemployment – 16 per cent and 17 per cent respectively. In Cowgate, one of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the city, the jobless rate amongst 18 to 24-year olds is a staggering 30 per cent.

Either way, most Neet young people aren’t idle or feckless; most want to work and few are outside the jobs market for very long – although they often ‘churn’ chronically between low-grade courses and poorly paid, insecure work. It’s not unusual for young people trying to enter the labour market to be subjected to exploitative conditions and endemic job insecurity. It’s understandable that their motivation and determination to work can wane over time. On the few occasions the young people taking part in our research were able to find decent, secure work and they usually stuck with it. Generally, Neet young people don’t lack aspiration, they lack meaningful opportunities.

Our research findings led to a number of conclusions, some of which relate to the nature of education and training available to Neet young people, which is often not effectively matched to their ambitions or capabilities.

However, as important is the need to reform the labour market itself: firstly, it’s clear that there is a desperate need to stimulate the demand for labour across the economy. Secondly, the labour market needs to be effectively managed and regulated. In other words, an industrial policy is what is needed.

Yes, there has to be a dose of realism with all this. It’s not feasible to re-open longclosed coal mines and shipyards. But much else that can be done such as creating work in the green economy, on environmental projects, in housing regeneration and on public infrastructure projects.

In the past six months, Labour-run Newcastle City Council has created a huge capital programme to invest in infrastructure, including roads, pavements, housing and ultrafast broadband. This in time will create much-needed skilled jobs, instil business confidence and help give jobless people across the North-East a sense of hope in the future.