Young Adults 'bearing Brunt Of Recession', Says Leading Thinktank

[billybong]

By 2012-13, however, the average income of pensioner households had risen to £388, 5 per cent more than working-age households.

Just to say that by "pensioner household" there's a good chance that just means a household that includes someone over 65. That person might or might not be working - along with any younger working (or not working) people in that household.

Even if it means a household with everyone over 65 some or all of them could still be working.

The average income of pensioner households entirely reliant on pensions for their income (even including benefits) is likely to be significantly lower than other households with workers in them - working-age or not.

Edited July 16, 2014 by billybong

[Eddie_George]

There was a concerted effort by many of "the young" to vote for the lib dems in the last election, as they were going to support/fight for key issues that were important to that particular demographic. Look what happened next. Stabbed in the back. While the selfish boomers/old duffers are the majority demographic, it is them that will be pandered to, and everyone else can pay for it.

This is a very good point. A party that seemed to have values, but sold its soul to get a minor role in government.

[fluffy666]

Around me I see people collecting final salary pensions that would be greater than the wages of new entrants if there was money to employ them.

Yet these people on their pensions do not retire. They collect both the pension and now also a wage. They can't 'afford' to retire, apparently. In the NHS I'd call them bed-blockers.

All the while youngsters work for free in their organisations in the hope of a salaried job one day.

I am surrounded by a lot of talented and enthusiastic youngsters who are wasting, often doing 'non-jobs' for free, often taking the slack of people who are paid to work.

I also see a lot of youngsters who are bone idle. But they just don't have a role model, or have given up, perhaps ?

I appreciate all the above are huge generalisations, but I don't remember it always being like this - or was it ?

I also try very hard to change it. But it's bl00dy hard work. The boomer generation has a self-serving, strangle hold.

(I class myself as a boomer, but according to Wikipedia I am just outside)

I hate to use the whole boiling-frog thing, (because it's wrong).

But it seems that..

Once upon a time you left school on Friday and started work on Monday. It may have been hard, it may not have been brilliantly paid, but the jobs were there.

Then it got a bit harder - you had to apply for more jobs, there were temping agencies, you actually had unemployment. Of course, if you were a graduate it was still pretty easy.

Then it got even harder, you started to need to do unpaid or badly paid apprenticeships, more jobs needed graduates, pay increases were rarer.

Then they added half of Poland to the entry level jobs market.

Then we started to talk about zero-hours contracts, NEETS, tuition fees meaning an increasing cost for even mid level jobs.

The jobs market of 2014 would have looked catastrophic from the viewpoint of the supposedly dark days of 1979..

[LiveinHope]

I hate to use the whole boiling-frog thing, (because it's wrong).

But it seems that..

Once upon a time you left school on Friday and started work on Monday. It may have been hard, it may not have been brilliantly paid, but the jobs were there.

Then it got a bit harder - you had to apply for more jobs, there were temping agencies, you actually had unemployment. Of course, if you were a graduate it was still pretty easy.

Then it got even harder, you started to need to do unpaid or badly paid apprenticeships, more jobs needed graduates, pay increases were rarer.

Then they added half of Poland to the entry level jobs market.

Then we started to talk about zero-hours contracts, NEETS, tuition fees meaning an increasing cost for even mid level jobs.

The jobs market of 2014 would have looked catastrophic from the viewpoint of the supposedly dark days of 1979..

It is now so bad in fact that I have difficulty believing it has actually been allowed to get and stay, this bad.

Edited July 16, 2014 by LiveinHope

[winkie]

It is now so bad that in fact I have difficulty believing it has actually been allowed to get and stay, this bad.

It is bad, and it is not looking like it is getting better any time soon....far more will be slipping through the net, there is no safty net to support it......reality wake up call....time to think and do things differently, all is not completly lost.

[crashmonitor]

I hate to use the whole boiling-frog thing, (because it's wrong).

But it seems that..

Once upon a time you left school on Friday and started work on Monday. It may have been hard, it may not have been brilliantly paid, but the jobs were there.

Then it got a bit harder - you had to apply for more jobs, there were temping agencies, you actually had unemployment. Of course, if you were a graduate it was still pretty easy.

Then it got even harder, you started to need to do unpaid or badly paid apprenticeships, more jobs needed graduates, pay increases were rarer.

Then they added half of Poland to the entry level jobs market.

Then we started to talk about zero-hours contracts, NEETS, tuition fees meaning an increasing cost for even mid level jobs.

The jobs market of 2014 would have looked catastrophic from the viewpoint of the supposedly dark days of 1979..

And no doubts who benefitted from importing 'half of Poland'.......suddenly cheap Labour at hand to serve the whims of older consumers and keep a lid on retail prices, rocket propel house prices, but most importantly to support the state retirement Ponzi schemes that hadn't even come close to being paid for. Generation x and y were just collateral damage...expendable casualties.

Edited July 16, 2014 by crashmonitor

[fluffy666]

It is now so bad in fact that I have difficulty believing it has actually been allowed to get and stay, this bad.

Relentless business lobbying, relentless right wing press propaganda, a pro-capital, anti-worker bias in practically every bit of legislation.

[Sandwiches33]

And no doubts who benefitted from importing 'half of Poland'.......suddenly cheap Labour at hand to serve the whims of older consumers and keep a lid on retail prices, rocket propel house prices, but most importantly to support the state retirement Ponzi schemes that hadn't even come close to being paid for. Generation x and y were just collateral damage...expendable casualties.

And no doubts who benefitted from importing 'half of Poland'.......suddenly cheap Labour at hand to serve the whims of older consumers and keep a lid on retail prices, rocket propel house prices, but most importantly to support the state retirement Ponzi schemes that hadn't even come close to being paid for. Generation x and y were just collateral damage...expendable casualties.

Just to add the jobs done by my grandparents for 40 years where they coul buy a house and save are now done by robots who never sleep. Technology isnt helping either, unless you get a job programming the robots.

[dances with sheeple]

I think it is the younger generation that is being gamed tbh and screwed over, I think the older generation have set the rules of the game and weighted the dice. Something has gone badly wrong if retirement means a higher income than working, where's the quid pro quo.

Look the fact that in retirement you are most likely to be mortgage free or have preferential access to rent free social housing (because those that set the rules have deemed the old you are more equal) should be reward enough, a higher income is just taking the piss. And I speak as a mortgage free boomer.

When it crashes young people will pick up homes for 40k, what`s to worry about if you are say 15 now? Too late for the twenty something I-Plod generation, but if you spend all day with your face in a phone, well, life is not going to come to you down the network is it? (although that is how "being connected" was portrayed by those with a VI in controlling young sheeple) What I was driving at is the amount of older people who seem to think that their house "value" is a function of anything other than credit supply.

[fluffy666]

Just to add the jobs done by my grandparents for 40 years where they coul buy a house and save are now done by robots who never sleep. Technology isnt helping either, unless you get a job programming the robots.

Technology should have helped.

What seems to have happened is that the 'leisure time revolution' that was predicted did arrive. BUT instead of manifesting as shorter working weeks and earlier retirement for all, it has manifested as mass unemployment and vast numbers of service sector low-value jobs - which only exist because this unemployment has driven down the cost of employing people. And at the same time we've celebrated mad house price bubbles even when mass production and automation combined with low land prices should have dropped the price of a good house under £50k.

[gf3]

Lets face it having people retire later has just increased the number of workers and driven down wages. What happened to the leisure society? Driving down wages has just helped the 1%.

[Greg Bowman]

Technology isnt helping either, unless you get a job programming the robots.

I think you will find IT has created a lot more jobs than it has removed by efficiency improvements. The trick was to ride the wave, not sure how easy now thats why I said was.

Edited July 16, 2014 by Greg Bowman

[notMyName]

What game?

Still Game.

What game?

Damn, 'I just lost the game'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_%28mind_game%29

[chronyx]

Damn you!

[wonderpup]

I think you will find IT has created a lot more jobs than it has removed by efficiency improvements. The trick was to ride the wave, not sure how easy now thats why I said was.

Kind of funny if true- we become more efficient but end up employing more people? How does that work? If efficiency means anything it means doing more with less.

Also there's an aspect of Technology that gets overlooked- the jobs that never got created in the first place because technology changed the paradigm- for example I could not tell you how many checkout jobs never got created due to the automated till in supermarkets- and the people who never got those jobs are not complaining since they never had them in the first place- but it's true to say that if I was not scanning my own stuff someone else would be paid to do that for me.

[cybernoid]

Kind of funny if true- we become more efficient but end up employing more people? How does that work?

There is more industry in which to employ them.

[the_dork]

There's a large chunk of these folks who are going to inherit at some stage though. What's frightening for me is not just the graduates who can't get the interesting relatively well paid jobs, but anyone who is below average intelligence/qualification basically being total dole fodder, no prospects of developing a trade or career within valued businesses. Either a series of zero hours McJobs or a life on the dole, which despite what some tabloids would have you believe, isn't the life of Riley.

Where is the rebellion? Where are the alternatives being proposed? Plenty of people came out on London streets to protest the Jews killing those who wanted to kill them but there's no enthusiasm for changing the system that condemns their own lives. Can football, X factor and iphones distract us forever???

[TheCountOfNowhere]

Where is the rebellion?

T'was France 1789 and Germany 1918, Russia 1917, The USA 1861, The Arab countries 2010. Even the chinese gave it a go 1949 and again in 1989.

All the best countries have had one.

Revolution happens when the poor and pushed too far, the poor in the UK are well fed and given free houses.

I had a thought the other day....maybe we need to see a House Buyers union, where young people rally together to exchange information of the true cost of housing, to organising setting their own price agenda, lobby against the banking system and to tell the big house building companies where to stick their shoddy shoe box slave boxes.

Will it happen...not while they are giving away free houses and food.

Edited July 21, 2014 by TheCountOfNowhere

[the_dork]

http://www.hse.ru/data/2013/01/28/1304836059/Standing.%20The_Precariat__The_New_Dangerous_Class__-Bloomsbury_USA(2011).pdf

Sorry for bumping, I've been away. I read The Precariat by Guy Standing-available as pdf here and it's a really great discussion of some of these issues.

Key points are that we have moved towards stigmatising individuals as 'lazy' 'feckless' etc, and though these can be accurate for some individuals we should really be looking at the wider system. He points out that this is the first time in history many have been too educated for their job prospects, a very unusual situation. He is scornful of the New Labour type 'social democratic' governments who've tried to manage globalisation and capitalism without fundamental change and sees the far right as capable of tapping into these people unless more is done to propose alternatives.

He advocates a basic income and has a great thorough global analysis rather than Owen Jones type tabloid ranting. I'd really recommend checking it out

[crashmonitor]

Kind of funny if true- we become more efficient but end up employing more people? How does that work? If efficiency means anything it means doing more with less.

Also there's an aspect of Technology that gets overlooked- the jobs that never got created in the first place because technology changed the paradigm- for example I could not tell you how many checkout jobs never got created due to the automated till in supermarkets- and the people who never got those jobs are not complaining since they never had them in the first place- but it's true to say that if I was not scanning my own stuff someone else would be paid to do that for me.

It's all about ensuring that we do work for each other rather than doing it for ourselves, thereby instead of retiring at 50 we will have to all go on until 70. At a low level Starbucks instead of a flask, a cleaner instead of cleaning your own house, a gardener instead of doing your own garden, a taxi instead of walking. But there's no limit....personal shoppers, style gurus...we may have to go on for ever to pay for all this stuff. GDP expands, the workforce expands and we all need to work until we drop.

[Dorkins]

It's all about ensuring that we do work for each other rather than doing it for ourselves, thereby instead of retiring at 50 we will have to all go on until 70. At a low level Starbucks instead of a flask, a cleaner instead of cleaning your own house, a gardener instead of doing your own garden, a taxi instead of walking. But there's no limit....personal shoppers, style gurus...we may have to go on for ever to pay for all this stuff. GDP expands, the workforce expands and we all need to work until we drop.

Plus the government gets to tax every transaction, and the bankers can charge interest if these services are produced or purchased using credit.

[frederico]

I'm always on tenter hooks for the latest think tank revelation.

[billybong]

Kind of funny if true- we become more efficient but end up employing more people? How does that work? If efficiency means anything it means doing more with less.

Also there's an aspect of Technology that gets overlooked- the jobs that never got created in the first place because technology changed the paradigm- for example I could not tell you how many checkout jobs never got created due to the automated till in supermarkets- and the people who never got those jobs are not complaining since they never had them in the first place- but it's true to say that if I was not scanning my own stuff someone else would be paid to do that for me.

A lot of those jobs have been replaced by jobs like standing and holding a stick with a placard on top in the shape of a large pointing finger with the words "Space Here" and pointing towards a checkout with little or no queue. How did people manage before they thought of that one.

Wherever you go there's lots of security people when a few years ago there were hardly any anywhere.

"A job" used to be 35/40 hours a week (plus overtime if extra hours were needed) and now for many it's only say 16 hours a week and extra people have to do the remainder of the weeks work and any overtime done by yet more people.

Etc etc etc.

It's become a bit like Japan was first reported to be years ago with their thing typically being groups of 2 or 3 smartly dressed (in corporate uniform) young Japanese females all over the place in department stores standing in line and with the sole job of bowing to the customers and smiling at them.

Edited July 26, 2014 by billybong

[Greg Bowman]

Kind of funny if true- we become more efficient but end up employing more people? How does that work? If efficiency means anything it means doing more with less.

Also there's an aspect of Technology that gets overlooked- the jobs that never got created in the first place because technology changed the paradigm- for example I could not tell you how many checkout jobs never got created due to the automated till in supermarkets- and the people who never got those jobs are not complaining since they never had them in the first place- but it's true to say that if I was not scanning my own stuff someone else would be paid to do that for me.

There are tens of thousands of people employed if not hundreds of thousands in jobs such as service desk, unified cabling, network engineers , project managers , app designers and so on. These jobs didn't exist on this scale thirty years ago.

Granted your average till operator couldn't do them but they aren't as skilled as people think and still open to all

[Si1]

Young adults need to get engaged politically and make their voices heard