Young people in Britain face a “triple-dip recession” of jobs, opportunities and prospects, the National Union of Students (NUS) representing 600 students’ unions in the UK, warned.
Citing evidence in a report from the New Economics Foundation (NEF) called Pound in Your Pocket, the NUS president Liam Burns predicted that the UK youth unemployment rate would “tip across the one million mark” amid the current economic crisis, press tv reported.
He also described the problem of students working long hours for low pay during their studies as a “scandal that has to be tackled”.
“The current youth jobs crisis is not simply a recessionary blip but a long-term and deep seated problem. Our labor market is failing to deliver economic prosperity, social justice and wellbeing for the majority,” Burns said at the annual conference of the NUS in Sheffield on Monday.
The UK has one of the worst levels for youth unemployment in the developed world, coming in after Spain and Greece in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD.(
Between November 2012 and January 2013, 993,000 young people aged 16-24 were unemployed in Britain, up 48,000 on the previous quarter.
