Europe

UK young people face increasingly uncertain future

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A London-based think tank has warned that young people’s prospects in Britain are “increasingly uncertain” since a large number of them are jobless and face an insurmountable housing market.

According to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), British youth are less able to depend on support from stable families, clear routes into work, and seize opportunities to settle by buying a home of their own.

The IPPR further noted that home ownership enables young people to settle into strong relationships and stable family lives, but “long-term failures” in industry and government policy have created a housing market “stacked against young people.”

The institute argued that the British money is being consumed in housing benefit rather than in building new homes for young families, and points to the £1.8 billion that the UK government spent on housing benefit for young people in 2012-13.

The IPPR also stated that Britain’s education system “does not always deliver” meaningful qualifications for young job seekers, creating a hurdle in the young people’s path to the job market.

“The ambition should be that no young person is NEET (not in employment, education or training) – almost all young people should be earning or learning, with clear progression routes at each stage,” Kayte Lawton, the author of the report, said.

She added, “Young people who leave school without a decent education need the chance to study for recognized qualifications before moving into work (preferably with further training) or higher-level education.”

“There is something fundamentally wrong with Britain’s youth jobs market. Young people without a job have been looking for work for longer since the recession: the rate of long-term youth unemployment (those out of work for a year or more) has more than doubled since 2008,” Lawton pointed out.

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