Doors stay closed for despairing young job hunters

Eighteen-year-old Formeeda from Sheffield, who is looking for work during the day and wants to train as a youth worker in the evenings, said she had failed to find work despite sending her CV to up to 300 companies.

“I’ve gone for jobs in retail, business and admin, but I have only had one interview which I hope might lead to an apprenticeship,” she said. “All the employers say they want experience and you can’t get experience at such a young age.

“Some businesses ask for five or six years’ experience, but where am I supposed to get that from? When older people with that experience are being made redundant, how can you compete?”

A lack of experience has also been an issue for Rachael Yeardley, 20, a second-year broadcast journalism student at Huddersfield University.

“The one thing I have found as I’ve tried to get jobs is that you have to have experience, but if companies aren’t willing to give you that experience, what hope do you have?” she said.

Official statistics revealed the number of 16 to 24-year-olds looking for work increased by 67,000 in the quarter to September to 1.02 million, the worst total since comparable records began in 1992.

Ministers say the figures are inflated by thousands of full-time students looking for part-time work to help them through university or college, but they still admit more action is needed to ease the plight of the young generation and the Confederation of British Industry has called for a Young Britain Credit, worth £1,500, to encourage firms to take on an unemployed 16 to 24 year-old.

At JobCentre Plus in Leeds, Liam Blakeley, 19, said he has been trying to find work for two years with little luck.

He said: “I want painting and decorating work or construction work but people don’t want to know.”

Business Secretary Vince Cable said the Government would slash the red tape which can deter firms from taking on apprentices, and provide a financial incentive to help the smallest firms recruit their first young apprentices.

And today David Cameron will announce a £250m fund to give businesses the power to design, develop and purchase vocational training programmes they need, while the Government also says that early signs from its flagship Work Programme, where private firms are being paid to support and find work for the long-term unemployed, are encouraging.

But yesterday the Bank of England painted a bleak economic picture for the UK as it forecast a heightened risk of a double-dip recession and paved the way for another round of emergency measures. Bank governor Sir Mervyn King said the unresolved eurozone debt crisis was the “single biggest risk” to the economy, as the bank cut its forecast for economic growth to around one per cent in both 2011 and 2012, although inflation is likely to fall far quicker than previously estimated.

Labour, meanwhile, has reiterated its call for a temporary VAT cut and reinstating a tax on bankers’ bonuses to pay for jobs for young people and affordable homes.

Back on the front line, Diane Reasbeck, operations manager at Future Prospects, which offers free learning and work advice to job seekers in York, said: “There are opportunities out there but people tend to need more support to actually find them because they are not as obvious as they were before.”

But Susan Atkins, director of the Youth Association South Yorkshire centre, which provides training courses for 14 to 19-year-olds, said it was a “big lie” that young people were not finding work because they are not employable. “The other big lie is that there is work out there somewhere. If that was the case, there are a lot of young people I know who would be queuing up for it,” she said.

While much of the focus has been on rising youth unemployment, think-tank IPPR North warned that female unemployment has risen by 19 per cent in Yorkshire over the past year.

Katie Schmuecker, senior research fellow at IPPR North, said: “The concern is that this will continue to get worse as public sector cuts continue to bite. This is because the public sector employs more women than men, and northern regions have more public sector jobs as a proportion of total jobs.”

Comment: Page 12; Failing a lost generation: Page 13.