I was speaking to a friend of mine yesterday and she told me about her son - who is a fully qualified engineer who cannot get a job. Nothing new here: it's unfortunately a far too common story these days. Then she told me that he was going to a new city to 'work for free' for a company so that at least he could get work experience. Now fair play to the guy and it's great that a company is prepared to give him this experience in a situation where it probably goes without saying that they can't afford to employ him (or anyone).
Now the problems of finding a job when you are unemployed are tough enough - but if you haven't even got any work experience then you're probably at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to handing out even the few jobs that are there. It's past time when the Government need to look at this issue specifically and perhaps come up with a way whereby companies could be incentivised to take on young people to give them some work experience - even if it is for no wage.
Now I know this is fraught with complications and could be abused and lots of other problems. But if this young man is prepared to go to the (extreme some would say) measure of working for nothing I am quite sure there are other young people who would be willing to do this too - for a limited time - in order to be able to get some work experience to put on their curriculum vitae. It's not ideal to be sure. But these are extraordinary times and maybe extraordinary measures are called for?
Of course another incentive would be eliminate what are essentially taxes on employing people - namely employers PRSI - which means that the more people you employ, the more money you pay the government for that privilege. That has to be crazy in this climate.
I find it difficult to understand why the government has not put an emergency jobs task force in place to identify measures we could take in tackling unemployment. There are obviously lots of different challenges out there for all the different groups. In the current circumstances I can't believe that it is no-ones job to be looking at this specific area and making recommendations which the Government would undertake as a matter of urgency.
Are FF, FG, Lab, Greens and the rest of them just too busy carving out notches on their respective belts recording the amount of damage they do to each other while the country, meanwhile goes to rack and ruin? Do they think that that impresses us or that we even care? I really detest party politics! They could all flog each other to death for all I care - I just wish they wouldn't do it on our time or in our name. I wish they would get on with the job that they claim they were elected to do and start tackling the real issues with some lateral thinking and some 'lets get off our asses and deal with this' attitude.
Maybe they are just trying to distract us from the fact that they don't have any ideas or don't know where to start when it comes to getting - or at least trying to get us - out of this creek that we've been landed in?
Enough with the distractions. Please - some ideas on the jobs front. Incentives; removal of barriers; new schemes, removal of blockages and anomalies in the system. A can do approach. Some urgency. Lives are being ruined here. Families split again - perhaps for life. Can't you at least try.
1 comment:
I agree. I am 26 and have an MBA but still cannot find work because the Baby Boomers refuse to employ younger people unless they can be easily exploited. Not to mention that I already had three years experience but was laid off in the wake of the financial implosion in '08.
You had indicated in your article that you did not understand why the government has not initiated an Emergency Jobs Task Force. The reason for this is quite simple. The reason is because the bulk of our nation's unemployment exist in a narrow age group...specifically, ages 22 - 30. In other words, all recent college or grad school graduates.
There is no government program in place because the government does not care about youth. Plain and simple. This is not my opinion...this is based entirely on fact as I have worked in politics.
For example, why does the government always pander to senior citizens? Because SENIORS VOTE! That is the reason why...SENIORS VOTE! Most people between 22 and 30 are simply not active in their communities or in politics because they are too busy trying to earn livings. That being the case, politicians do not give a tinker's damn about these young unfortunates. Furthermore, the income levels of these young people is not high enough to be considered a substantial tax base, which is another reason why politicians don't care.
This country is in for one hell of a shock because when the baby boomers finally get out of the way after consuming as much as humanly possible, my generation will begin to fill their positions in the work force. Most of us will be inexperienced and relatively incompetent. This will cause another economic slowdown due to our need to retrain our workforce in the white collar world.
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