We are raising a generation that doesn’t know how to work

Hamish McRae I columnist.

Key points

• This is Armchair Economics with Hamish McRae, a subscriber-only newsletter from The I Paper.
• Ten thousand is a decent number to take on, and if other firms pitch in, you could envisage the total being 10 or 20 times that total.
• Sainsbury's has just introduced a plan to provide 10, 000 young individuals work experience opportunities to assist them "develop skills, build confidence and gain insight into future careers".
• Our new Prime Minister remarked: I encourage more businesses nationwide to do the same.
• The background of the rising numbers of young individuals not in education, employment or training (Neets) has been widely noted.

This is Armchair Economics with Hamish McRae, a subscriber-only newsletter from The I Paper. If you'd like to obtain this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.

Sainsbury's has just introduced a plan to provide 10, 000 young individuals work experience opportunities to assist them "develop skills, build confidence and gain insight into future careers". Andy Burnham thinks it's a great idea, and he's probably right.

Our new Prime Minister remarked: "I encourage more businesses nationwide to do the same. Access to opportunity and work experience shouldn't depend on who you know; it should be within reach for every young person wherever they live – and that's what I'm determined to deliver."

In practice, the background of the rising numbers of young individuals not in education, employment or training (Neets) has been widely noted. As the International Labour Organisation lately noted, it's a massive global challenge.

While the UK is by no means top – or perhaps it's better to say the bottom – of the global league table here, we now have a higher proportion of Neets than the EU average, whereas a decade ago we were lower. The worrying point here is that while our overall unemployment level is lower than the EU (though higher than the US), our youth unemployment rate is over 16 per cent and heading in the wrong direction.

What's to be done? There are really two ways of tackling this and we probably need both.

Notably, the Sainsbury's initiative is a great example of the first: show young individuals what work is really like, coach them on how to present themselves, build their confidence, and so on. Ten thousand is a decent number to take on, and if other firms pitch in, you could envisage the total being 10 or 20 times that total. But there are now more than a million Neets in the UK, and these are not even temporary jobs, let alone permanent ones. You show up and hopefully you learn something. But you don't obtain paid. And I am afraid that these schemes are only really useful for young individuals if there are jobs afterwards they can take up.

Which leads us to the other way of looking at the whole matter. It is to boost the number of paid jobs for young residents. The summer's just coming to an end, and the long school holiday has historically been the time when plenty of residents obtain their first pay packet.

For now, we are raising a generation that doesn't know how to work remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.