‘It’s so demoralising’: UK graduates exasperated by high unemployment

12 comments

1. What irritates me is the requirement to basically be Albert Einstein just to stack shelves or do basic admin work.

   I’ve been rejected for jobs I’m 150% capable of doing just on the basis that I’m not as experienced as someone else, or whatever it is.

   It’s insane to be having to jump through hoops like this. It makes you feel incompetent, even if you’re very competent. It also makes you feel disempowered and like you’re just not good enough, but the papers will turn around and call you “lazy” for it.

2. Too many graduates and businesses afraid to take on more workers due to rising costs. Who would have thought so many would be out of work…

3. There is a glut of graduates and not enough skilled workers to train them. I look after a lot of our early careers strategy at work, and after taking over 100 grads a year for the last 3, we’ve had to pull up the draw bridge this year.

   There is a combination of the difficulties in hiring experienced staff to train them while being able to deliver on the company’s commitments and the Covid years’ grads being so far behind previous years that they’re not advancing fast enough to fill that middle layer and help to train the new starts.

4. Don’t worry. AI will help them lose even more jobs.

5. Economy works on supply and demand. There is little demand for graduates, big demand for carers.

6. Unless we want to somehow force employers to take on new staff even if they don’t want to, we need to give people between jobs actual support. Basic income, negative income tax, unemployment insurance, whatever. A bit of unemployment is a feature of a healthy economy and it doesn’t help companies to take on people lying about their skills out of desperation, so we shouldn’t be forcing people into work that doesn’t suit them under pain of debt and destitution.

   Graduates have the worst of both worlds because they’ve been paying through the nose for rent and getting into overdrafts because their student finance is so low. They have nothing saved to live on but can’t get a job or often access to benefits. The lucky ones have family willing to help.

7. Does anyone remember that very brief six month period after Covid when somehow for the first time in nearly two decades it was an employee’s market?

   What’s different, how much is media hype and how much is reality…?

8. It’s been like this for over a year, has only got worse and yet the anti-benefits brigade will say people should just get a job and work when there are no jobs.

   It’s even turned in to crapshoot for basic retail. Argos is usually a shoo-in for Christmas work but they’re not even hiring. It leaves people with what? McDonalds for a whole 2p over minimum wage? Whoop!

9. The 3 year degree in Media Studies or Textile History probably doesnt help

10. I had the same thing in 2010 after the great recession. No jobs unless you knew someone already, or your family could support you whilst you worked an internship for free.

    I ended up doing 7 years in hospitality before starting my career now.

    I feel bad for the grads – I hope AI unlocks new industries and jobs we haven’t thought of yet, but it doesn’t look that way right now

11. For what degree and from which university are graduates not finding jobs? They should not be able to charge the same fees as successful places.

12. But apparently immigration is not the problem

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