Nurturing the Potential of Young People : What Needs to Change?
By Adam Poole
“All of these young people have some kind of potential in them. And if we don’t invest in them as a nation, regardless of where they come from or what colour they are, if we don’t invest in them, we lose.”
Michelle Obama (American attorney, author and former First Lady of the United States of America)
Young people are the future of global society: the more we invest in them now, the stronger our world will be in the future. This is the message that Michelle Obama seeks to bring home in this quote. And it is very true. If we want to tackle the most pressing problems of today, such as climate change, disease, poverty and war, then young people must be provided with the tools to do that, and to create a brighter future for the planet. This article seeks to address this: what barriers are young people facing today in being able to create this brighter future? And what can be done to strengthen the pathways to this?
Young people, especially young women, have been hit hard in the past year due to mass job losses and a limited supply of vacancies moving forward. Even though employment at all ages has been hit to some extent since 2020, the disparity of the impact of this on young people is clear to see. The decrease in employment for adults in 2020 was 3.7%, compared to 8.7% for young people (over double the impact). The International Labour Organisation (ILO) also estimated that in the second quarter of 2020, employment for young women fell by 13.9%, compared to 11.2% for young men.
This demonstrates the sheer impact of the pandemic on young people. Youth employment was a major issue even prior to it, so the same issues have simply been amplified. Perhaps this is what it takes for us as a whole society to take note. Young people are especially vulnerable given the fact that they are more often than not employed in lower wage, more insecure sectors, such as hospitality and retail. Furthermore, those in education throughout 2020 and 2021 have been significantly set back by prolonged school closures, and difficulty in finding valuable internship and voluntary opportunities needed to stand out in an already competitive job market.
So, what can be done? Yes, young people do have a responsibility to upskill themselves and show employers why they would be valuable to their business, but it is also up to organisations to provide sufficient opportunities in the first place. Essentially, it’s a two-way street. Firstly, there is a responsibility of the state to invest in youth development. Whether that is training courses through school and university, financial incentives for employers to boost their graduate opportunities, or equivalent training schemes for non-university students, plus further specific support for groups facing barriers of social mobility. This may be along the lines of ethnicity, gender or disability.
Young people themselves also do have a responsibility. And this is to place pressure on elites in the government and business worlds to provide opportunities. Lobby your MP, or other powerful politicians in the education world; place pressure on your academic institution to increase training for a specific sector you feel many of your peers would benefit from; even something as simple as signing a petition makes a difference. As a young person don’t expect to be able to go out and change a CEOs mind at the drop of the hat. However, with enough group pressure, you can place pressure on those with a duty of responsibility for your welfare (i.e., the state, academic staff or your current bosses if in work), and these figures in turn can use their influence to drive change.
Yes, this blog post hasn’t gone into specifics about particular ways youth inequality in the labour market needs to change. However, that isn’t the point here. The point is to highlight a greater issue and broader trends here. Ultimately, it is up to you as an individual to decide the actions you take, as this fully depends on your chosen career ambitions. As the quote by Michelle Obama reflects, it is up to those in positions of power now to make change going forward, but how specifically that happens can be determined by how young people choose to influence these changes.
Sources:
COVID-19 has increased youth unemployment | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)
