Britons Are Young, Ready and Willing, but Few Jobs in Sight

LONDON — Zach Igglesden has been sending out dozens of job applications a week for the past year to companies across Britain. So far, he said, he has not even been invited to an interview.

Mr. Igglesden, 20, of Southend, east of London, finished secondary school two years ago and decided against pursuing a university education because he did not want to graduate with the burden of a student loan and no job.

His goal is relatively modest — to work as a sales assistant in a shop — but he said he had repeatedly been turned down because he lacked experience.

“It’s just very frustrating,” Mr. Igglesden said. “If you’re lucky, you get a reply, but mostly you don’t hear anything at all.”

To the roster of pain inflicted by the European debt crisis, add this: rising and persistent joblessness among young Britons. Though not at the level of troubled euro zone countries like Greece and rooted in domestic problems as well, it has reached a point here that is setting off alarms across the political and economic spectrum.

Unemployment among British youth, defined as those 16 to 24 years old, rose above the politically sensitive threshold of one million in the three months through the end of September, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday. That’s the highest level since 1992.

An estimated 20.6 percent of British youth not pursuing a full-time education were without a job, an increase of 1.8 percentage points from the previous three months.

The problem is not confined to youth. Total unemployment in Britain rose by 129,000 to 2.62 million in the third quarter, bringing the jobless rate to 8.3 percent, the highest in 15 years.

Youth unemployment has been climbing in many European Union member states as economies struggle and governments impose stringent austerity plans. Spain’s youth unemployment rate reached 45 percent in the second quarter, the worst among European Union members, followed by Greece with 42.9 percent rate, according to Eurostat, the European Union statistics agency.

Britain never joined the euro zone and relies on its own currency, the pound. But the British government, which like its Greek counterpart has cut public-sector jobs and spending to trim a huge budget deficit, blamed the poor employment data in part on the euro crisis, which has depressed demand for British products in European markets and caused British companies to hesitate to hire.

“These figures show just how much our economy is being affected by the crisis in the euro zone,” Employment Minister Chris Grayling said Wednesday. “Our European partners must take urgent action to stabilize the position.”

The Bank of England also cited the euro crisis Wednesday as a reason for slashing its outlook for economic growth in 2012 to 1 percent, from an earlier projection of 2 percent, and paring its forecast for 2013 by half a percentage point, to 2.5 percent.

“Implementation of a credible and effective policy response in the euro area would help to reduce uncertainty and so support U.K. growth, but its absence poses the single biggest risk to the domestic recovery,” the bank said in its quarterly Inflation Report.

The opposition Labour Party warned Wednesday that the coalition government headed by Prime Minister David Cameron needed to stop blaming the euro zone for Britain’s economic problems and slow down its aggressive spending cuts that are “hurting but not working.”

Even the Confederation of British Industry, an employers’ group that generally aligns with the economic policies of Mr. Cameron’s Conservative Party, called Wednesday for urgent action by the government to get Britons, especially young people, working.

“A generation risks being scarred by the devastating effects of long-term unemployment,” said John Cridland, the group’s director general.

Rising unemployment among the young is especially worrying because it can easily lead to long-term unemployment and make it harder for the next generation to find their way into the work force, economists and charity workers said. That would not only hurt economic growth but could also affect youth crime rates, research showed.

Reducing youth unemployment by one percentage point could save £2 million, or $3.2 million, by avoiding youth crime, according to research by the Center for Economic Performance, a research concern at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/business/global/britons-are-young-ready-and-willing-but-few-jobs-in-sight.html?partner=rss&emc=rss