Dealing with youth unemployment: hope vs reality

Hello! My Singaporean friend Chris has just given me a kettle - well, it's his old kettle. He has just graduated from law school in London and he's returning to Singapore. It was his graduation today and he was clearing out a lot of the stuff from his flat and amongst the items he was giving away, I got the kettle. Well, I asked for it because my current kettle has been with me for many years and I was long overdue for a new one. I thought it was going to a whole lot of, "I'll catch you when I am in Singapore..." But guess what? Chris told me he has just received a job offer from Linklaters in London - he applied as part of their graduate recruitment programme and was successful. So he's merely returning to Singapore for a holiday and then returning to London to start work in a few months. At which point I said, "oh, perhaps I should just hold on to the kettle for you until you return to London?" He said, "Nah, it's okay, please keep it." Heck, never mind a new kettle, he should be able to afford a whole new kitchen when he starts working with Linklaters.

So you've graduated... can you get a job?

I left his flat with his kettle and thought, how nice - Chris has managed to land his dream job with an excellent law firm. Then I remembered that I have English friends who are unemployed and underemployed (ie. either working only part time or overqualified for the jobs they're doing), then a thought popped into my head: should this company be recruiting local candidates for their graduate recruitment programme or should they be tapping the best talent from anywhere in the world? Of course, with my Singaporean friend Chris benefiting from the latter, I tended to think that it should be the latter. But perhaps the British are not so concerned about the few brilliant Singaporean graduates who manage to get themselves very good jobs in the UK - unless you're from one of the top universities in the UK (and we're talking top five here), the chances of you getting a job here after graduation is slim. 

Rather, what the Brits have been nervous about is the possible influx of Greek economic migrants should Greece really leave the Eurozone and the Greek economy is thrown back into the dark ages. Youth unemployment is about 50% in both Spain and Greece (with some reports estimating youth unemployment in Greece as high as 60%), one wonders how bleak the future has to be for the Greek and Spanish youths before they pack their bags and head for somewhere like London. The UK is an obvious choice for the Greeks as English is the second language taught in Greek schools and many young Greeks have quite a decent grasp of the English language. The standard of English in Spain is a little lower than Greece - Spanish people find it easier to learn a foreign language like French or Italian. So rather than heading to Sweden, Belgium or Germany and grapple with a new language, why not just head to the UK then (where the rate of youth unemployment is 15.7%)? Mind you, that's still not as low as Germany, where it is just 7.2%. Whilst Ireland is English speaking too but their economy is also struggling to recover from the recession. 

The Eurozone has been in crisis for quite a few years...

There has been only a trickle of economic migrants to the UK from these recession stricken EU countries - the great Greek and Spanish influx simply has not happened. Mind you, these Greek and Spanish migrants don't need a work permit because they are a part of the EU. Hence they can literally just get off the plane and start working in the UK immediately. Yes, it is that easy. So why haven't they come to the UK then, if there are really no barriers to entry for them and many of these youths do speak English pretty well anyway? Well, here are a few good reasons why they have stayed away from London. Time for a reality check. 

1. The high cost of living

Compared to Greece and Spain, London can be an expensive city to live in - yet it is where the best job opportunities are. If you moved to the middle of the Scottish countryside, then yes many things are much cheaper but you will have far fewer job opportunities there. So most economic migrants come to London (or at least to another big city like Manchester or Birmingham) in search of jobs and immediately, before they even start looking for a job, they have to find a place to live and then they realize, damn - how much do I have to pay for a room? Are you serious? Is it really that expensive? They then have the painful choice: either they live in the center of town and pay a lot of rent, or they live far out in the suburbs and spend a lot of time and money commuting into town - neither options are attractive to migrant who has yet to secure any kind of employment. Then there's everything else like food, transport, utility bills - the bare necessities are not cheap at all in the UK. They are affordable of course to those who do have a job, but if you're a 21 year old Greek migrant who has just arrived in London, such costs present a very high barrier to entry. 

Trying to find a place to live in London isn't cheap...

Think about it: if our 21 year old Greek friend is living at home with his parents, he may be unemployed but at least he has a roof over his head and his parents will always put food at the table. He doesn't have to worry about rent, food or paying the bills and most of all, his family is there to help him out. So unless his parents have the means and are willing to sponsor his quest to start a new life in London, then trying to find enough money to get our young Greek friend started in London is going to be a huge challenge; especially at a time when the Greek banking system is close to collapse and people are only allowed to withdraw 420 euros a week from ATMs. Without a good job, you'll be struggling to make ends meet in London and that's hardly living the dream. The Greek economy may be dire, but the London dream is probably just too expensive for most younger Greeks to contemplate at this stage.

2. Uncertainty in the lower end of the job market

The streets of London are not paved with gold: there are job opportunities, but there is no guarantee that you will be able to secure a permanent job quickly enough. So much of that depends on whether or not you have the right skills. So for example, if you are a qualified nurse, then there's no problem at all: the hospitals in the UK are so desperate for trained nurses they are recruiting from places as far away as the Philippines. And if you are happy to settle for a job involving menial labour, then sure you can work as a cleaner or a waiter for very little money - but these jobs are often zero-hour contracts: that means you're offered a contract with no fixed hours. Those on zero-hour contracts are offered work only when they are needed and there is no financial stability at all for those on these zero-hour contracts.

An unemployed young Greek person with little work experience faces quite an uphill struggle if he wants to secure a good job - even if s/he has a degree, there simply isn't the opportunity for them to get the work experience they need in Greece. Those with a degree probably get the worst end of the deal: unskilled migrant workers are happy to do menial work because a cleaner or a waiter in London is still paid far more than those in say Greece or Spain. Those with a degree however, come to somewhere like London with much higher expectations and are often disappointed when they realize just how hard it is to secure a good job here. Don't get me wrong, if you have a degree from one of the top law schools like my friend Chris, then there's no issue whatsoever with getting a job, but if you're armed with a degree from a Greek university that no one has ever heard of, then your prospects are a lot more bleak.

3. The lawyers, accountants, doctors in Greece, Spain etc are not doing too badly

Here's the thing you have to understand about the Greek economy: in spite of all the attention grabbing headlines of late, it hasn't collapsed totally. It is in crisis, it is in a bad shape no doubt, but those who have skills are probably still gainfully employed and drawing a decent salary, Sure they may not be as highly paid as their counterparts in London, but they are at least still secure where they are. These are the people most likely to get a good job in London, yet they are the ones least likely to leave Greece - it is the unemployed youths who are the ones who are mostly likely to leave Greece, yet they are the ones least likely to be able to get a decent job in somewhere like London. So as you can see, this keeps the Greeks in Greece and that's just as well, as Greece can ill afford a brain drain at the moment.

Highly skilled professionals are less affected by the recession.

4. No safety net if they fail 

And here's the thing: there's no safety net for a Greek youth who comes to London looking for work. It is a gamble at best, they invest their savings (or their parents' savings) to come to London and hope that it pays off. Jobless EU migrants are not entitled to the same range of benefits - mainly those which are funded from salary contributions. Workers pay social security contributions, to cover sickness, unemployment, maternity or paternity, invalidity or occupational injuries. Chances are, if they become totally destitute, the police might just call the Greek embassy and get the embassy to assist the Greek person as the UK government are under no obligation to help the Greek person, even in hardship cases. It is undoubtedly a harsh situation but the UK government is not prepared to guarantee a better future for millions of unemployed Greek youths.  

5. Trying to make the best of a bad situation?

Even with youth unemployment running at 50% in both Greece and Spain, we can extrapolate one simple mathematical fact: that at least 1 in 2 Greek and Spanish youths are able to find employment, no doubt some of them actually do have good jobs in spite of the recession. Let's put it this way: imagine there is a class of 100 students and the teacher says, "I have a reward for the top 50 students in the class - that reward is a good job with a great company locally. For the bottom 50 students, I have nothing for you. Study hard and good luck" The student taking the exam is thinking, "I don't need to be the best, I just need to be in the top half: how hard can that be? I just need to beat the half of the class who are too stupid to do well in this exam. If I study hard enough, I will make it into the top half." But the teacher doesn't hand out the job contracts when she hands out the result slips - you'll have to start applying for jobs and wait for the outcome before you find out if you are indeed one of the lucky ones in the top 50 of the class. 

It does take a while to find a new job, many people can spend weeks, even months before they find a job they are happy with. So in the meantime, the vast majority of the class think that they have probably done well enough to make the top 50 but with no real way of finding out where they stand, many of them remain cautiously optimistic despite being unemployed for a long time. In their minds, they're not unemployed, they're just looking for the right job that suits that. So we have a situation where millions of Greek and  Spanish youths are buying that lottery ticket (with the prize being a 1 in 2 chance for a job) but they never really find out if they have won or not. Perhaps it is just hope and optimism that keeps them thinking, "fingers crossed, maybe I've won, the odds are not that bad..." And so they wait. And they hope that the situation in their country will improve in the near future.

Besides, it is not a level playing field. Some youths have parents who have invested a lot in their future by getting them private tuition to ensure good results at the exams, their parents manage to secure them internships to guarantee them some work experience on their CV, they even learn a foreign language or two to a very high standard, they have done additional vocational training to beef up their skills and have spent their free time doing interesting activities from sports to music. Many of these activities help build up what is known as 'soft-skills' for the student and these will for example, help the candidate perform a lot better at job interviews or perform better when it comes to proving himself/herself at a selection activity. The more the students (and their family) have invested in their future, the more optimistic they are of their chances in this lottery process. So some of this optimism may be misplaced, as it is based on what they have invested in the process, rather than how well the youth has actually performed in the process.

So there we are, that's why we have not had an influx of Greek and Spanish economic migrants yet in London despite the dire state of the economy in those two countries. One wonders just how bad things have to get in those countries before the youth will finally realize, damn I have no future here, it's time to leave, where should I go to get a job? Does youth unemployment have to rise to 75% or even 90% before they realize that their odds of finding a job is not great? Well, one hopes for the Greeks and the Spanish that things never get that bad. Good luck to them. Thanks for reading.