Try, Test and Learn Fund – Discuss – Topic 1
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What are the barriers that people face in taking up work opportunities? In particular for young parents, young carers and young students who do not successfully complete a course?
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4 comments on Try, Test and Learn Fund – Discuss – Topic 1
People are fooling themselves …
The unemployment rate is controlled by govt spending which stimulates demand in the economy.
Australia had a full employment policy from after WW2 to till after the first world oil shock hit in 1973.
It was then big business pushed for neoliberalism and that higher unemployment should be tolerated as a trade off to inflation.
So Australia went from 2% unemployment to 6% …
The govt acting on behalf of big business has created poverty then it turn around and bashes people on welfare.
Australia needs to go back to a full employment policy with the implementation of a job guarantee scheme that also acts as an anchor for inflation.
Economist Bill Mitchell has worked on a Job Guarantee policy
http://e1.newcastle.edu.au/coffee/job_guarantee/JobGuarantee.cfm
Not everyone is academically inclined and we forget to say to our young people that it is OK not to be. We forget to tell them they have or can learn other skills to achieve in life. These may be trades skills or life skills. If young people who are likely to ‘fall through the gaps’ because they have no interest in higher education or even completing high school had other options and knew they could complete programs that gave them skills to manage their journey through life and achieve, maybe welfare would not be appealing. We need to offer different paths so they have choices.
The challenge becomes how to re engage them – our experience with a program we have been working on at Infoxchange regarding employment for disadvantaged youth is that they don’t really find welfare appealing – And I totally agree with your comment re the multiple and different paths. The critical piece though is they need to be coordinated end-to-end with meaningful employment being the end goal.
From a practical point-of-view I have seen that one of the major barriers under 25s experience which stops them from even apply for jobs was their lack of a car licence – a requirement for a number of entry level positions. We also need to consider that many entry level positions are now advertised with relatively high experience and/or skill requirements – so we need to ask why potential employers have so raised the expected experience and skill levels of applicants for entry level jobs.