Betraying the future
Cuts are limiting the post-Troubles generation’s prospects, John O’Farrell warns.
In March 2011, unemployment in Northern Ireland had officially passed the 60,000 mark. Of those, over 30 per cent were under 25. After years of platitudes from politicians of all persuasions and nationalities tell us that “the children were our future”, this is the peace dividend granted to the young.
Northern Ireland has the best educated young workers in the UK. Forty-four per cent attend or have attained third-level education, compared to a UK average of 34 per cent. However, the options for those starting out in the world of work are bleaker than during the worst periods of the ‘Troubles’. Student debt has spiralled in recent years, with graduates owing an average of £20,000 before they collect their first pay cheque. This is bound to increase if proposals to (at least) double college fees goes ahead.
Where do they start working? There has been a de facto recruitment freeze in the Civil Service and teaching, and skilled work in the private sector is a diminishing prospect with the crash in construction, huge job losses in the financial sector and the continuing decline in manufacturing. For those who do not emigrate, staying in Northern Ireland means working at a level well below your education. What this means in practice is that there are fully qualified teachers working in call centres, accountants serving coffee, and historians selling cheap Chinese clothing. Their skills are mobile. Their departure is our loss.
The Executive’s monthly statistics tell this story. While fewer than 5 per cent of those who have ‘signed on’ in the past year have degrees, over 65 per cent have fewer than five GCSEs or no qualifications at all. If the highly qualified young are forced to work at levels well below their skill sets (and income expectation), then the under-qualified are being forced out of the labour market completely. Many end up on training programmes such as Training for Success and Steps to Work, but their prospects for getting paid work are receding. While in training, many can improve their literacy and numeracy skills, but other avenues for educational advancement are closing; not least is the abolition of the educational maintenance allowance, a modest payment of £30 per week for disadvantaged teenagers to remain in school up to A-level.
‘Entry-level’ jobs have traditionally been in the sectors of the economy which have been hardest hit – construction, retail and services. The preponderance of smaller businesses means that the young have been the first to be laid off and find it hardest to find other work. The private sector is facing more difficulties as government contracts are under threat from cutbacks. One-third of all private sector businesses depend wholly or partly upon public procurement, which is worth over £3 billion annually. It is estimated that 15,000 private sector jobs are under threat. Other services are facing further squeezes as wage freezes and inflation eat into consumer spending.
The recession is compounding the errors committed during the boom years before 2008. Very few young workers in the private sector have any pension provision, and despite a sharp decline, owning a home is still prohibitively expensive, especially for those on or below the private sector average income of £23,000. After the crash, banks stopped lending mortgages at an affordable rate, and so a generation is emerging which is markedly worse off than its elders – and they realise that.
A similar picture is emerging in the public sector, with younger workers facing worse pension plans and huge uncertainty with the threats of 30,000 redundancies in the next three years as £4 billion is taken out of the Northern Ireland Executive’s budget. The public sector has been the provider of most graduate jobs, which is the main reason why average earnings are higher than in the private sector, but what will happen to the lives of the nurses, teachers and administrators who have indebted themselves hugely by investing in what were regarded at tickets to the middle class? They have kept their end of the social contract with society, and now society has reneged on the deal.
The Northern Ireland Assembly, which has completed its term, deserves praise for staying the course. The institutions are firmly settled in and the priorities are economic, as they ought to be, in the ‘post-Troubles’ era. However, for the ‘post-Troubles’ generation, this is not how we ought to be investing in the future.
