Oh to be young again… well maybe!

Youth are both the present actors and the future leaders of society, driving innovation, economic shifts, and social change. They will define our collective future, bring new ideas, innovation and new ways of working.

So why have we created a society that doesn’t value youth? Or is it we have created a society that has priced out the young.

When I was a teenager and in education, I had paper rounds, moving onto delivering the more lucrative weekly magazines, worked car washes, bar jobs, filing & data entry roles amongst the many roles. It was low paid, maybe even exploitative hourly rates but gave me spending money and a sense of worth.

14% of 16-24 year olds are defined as NEETS, not in education or employment or training. That’s over one million young people neither advancing their learning nor contributing to society through work. Why is that?

I don’t doubt that most want to work, the fundamental problem is that the young have been priced out by the actual legislation that was designed to protect them, the National Minimum Wage. It protects against slave labour and is designed to ensure that people are paid their worth, but as always, the unintended consequences have created mass youth unemployment. By increasing the floor hourly rates in a low wage inflation environment it has created wage compression. The delta between a new entrant to the job market and someone that has multiple years of experience is becoming wafer thin. Who would you employ? An experienced hand or a newbie… that’s a loaded question by the way.

A different approach is required. We need to create an environment through company incentives that actively recruits young people. We should value their energy and optimism and enable companies to recruit. There are other factors that need to stabilise such as the adoption of AI that is seen as a replacement for youth employment, poor economic sentiment which is cyclical and will improve at some point and increasing employment rights, which will loosen at some point, but let’s build a framework that encourages youth employment.

At Heligan, we are proud to invest in young talent, with a further six graduates joining this September. The future is youth, and should be celebrated and we hope that our small part in supporting these ambitious individuals will contribute to society. It isn’t middle aged people that will shape our collective future, it is those entering the workforce today. We should create an ecosystem that encourages and develops these individuals.