It’s a tricky time for many young people entering the workforce
or developing their careers. Finding work during an economic crisis is hard,
but even more so now when a global pandemic is causing layoffs and halting hiring.
So why is the crisis so hard on young people?
So, the first few months of 2020 they were really interesting.
So, I decided to really go forward with my idea of starting my business,
it’s a slow fashion brand. In January I kind of
put together a business plan, and my idea was to do this in March.
Little did I know that this whole thing that changed the whole world was coming.
Teresa Carmona found herself unemployed at the end of 2019 at the age of 26
and decided it was time to start her own business.
But the coronavirus pandemic threw a curveball at her plans.
I was putting together this idea to do a small pop-up to kind of introduce the brand,
get people excited about what I was creating,
and then come March, things started to shut down.
I, unfortunately, was then not able to go forward with the pop-up,
it really kind of pushed everything up in the air, and it really took me by surprise.
I think I suddenly became really anxious because this idea
that I had really clear in my mind was suddenly very vague.
I didn’t know how to proceed. For about a month or two, I really stopped
almost everything I was doing because I felt so afraid and so anxious
and at a loss of how to move forward, how am I meant to start a business
in the middle of a pandemic, so that was really, really difficult.
Teresa is just one of the many young people who have struggled
to develop their career plans against the backdrop of a global pandemic,
which has been responsible for economic disruption across the world.
In the wake of the pandemic, one-third of those aged between 18 and 24 in the U.K.
have lost their jobs or been placed on temporary support schemes
with no guarantee of a return to regular employment. That was more than any other age bracket.
However, the challenges facing young people are part of a worldwide trend.
In the euro zone, the unemployment rate among those younger than 25 exceeded 18% in August.
The figure has increased since April, which was the first full month
of lockdown measures in the region.
The United States also saw 1.8 million fewer 16- to 24-year-olds in the workforce
in July 2020 compared to the same month of the previous year.
The start of the summer period traditionally coincides with many high school
and college students looking for summer jobs
and graduates entering the labor force for the first time.
But this year, there were far fewer opportunities available.
Mobility data collected by telecom firm Vodafone shows us how stay-at-home orders
have impacted younger age groups more than other working-age people.
If you look at, for instance, the drop in mobility around stay at home orders,
you get a much bigger drop for young people who are under the age of 44,
and I think this reflects two things: one is that, you know, they tend to
have younger children and school closures disproportionally affect them,
and secondly, a lot of young people work on temporary contracts
and those are the first ones that get killed in a crisis.
So why has the economic fallout of the pandemic hit young people so hard?
It’s targeting or having its biggest impact in industries like hospitality and leisure and tourism,
and young people are 2.5 times more likely to work in those sectors,
so we are seeing young people on furlough or losing their jobs.
There’s a lot of young people who have been displaced from their jobs because of coronavirus.
But then at the same time, you are seeing young people who have left education this summer,
are also now coming into the labor market looking for their first job.
Labor-intensive industries, such as retail and hospitality,
usually employ a large proportion of young people.
But these sectors have been unable to work at full capacity.
Data collected from recruitment website Indeed showed that job postings in these
contact-sensitive sectors fell even before stay-at-home orders were implemented in Europe,
as people grew wary of rising infection risks.
As the health emergency worsened, firms in these sectors became reluctant
to hire new people or even to keep existing employees on their payroll.
But this is not the only problem. Unlike older cohorts who can dip into
their savings, investments or government support, young people are more reliant on their wages.
They are also more likely to be on temporary job contracts,
making them even more vulnerable when companies decide to reduce their headcounts.
Besides, companies operating outside the retail or hospitality sector
are keener to hire employees with more experience.
Because of the remote working thing, there is a reluctance to hire staff
that need too much input and support. Onboarding somebody or bringing somebody
into your business who knows what they are doing and has the experience
and is a little bit more mature, and probably their home-working setup
is a lot more effective. That all works much, much better for our clients.
The challenges of finding a job or beginning a career
in the middle of a pandemic have long-term consequences.
I know that you are in touch with different young people.
What are the main concerns among them?
It starts with, for many, mental health, you know, the lockdown and isolation has caused
a lot of challenges for young people, there’s that lack of social interaction
with peer groups and friends. Those who would have been doing exams this year
and the stress of not knowing how that system is going to play out for them.
Before the pandemic, young people didn’t feel particularly confident about their futures,
they didn’t feel they would find a good job where they lived,
and so the pandemic has amplified that low level of confidence.
How do you think this economic crisis is impacting young people?
So, I think mental health is a really big issue there. It is a time when we are starting careers,
we are starting our jobs, and with all of this,
it's really daunting and it can feel like, you know, nobody is hiring,
and suddenly, this picture that we might have had of our future suddenly is really dim.
So what can be done?
It’s very important for governments to provide social safety nets to everybody,
to make sure that even these people who are under the age of 44 who are losing jobs
get the income support that they need. But we also need to provide retraining, reskilling,
so that many of them can be relocated from sectors that are shrinking.
Like, for instance, the travel sector, as opposed to sectors which are growing,
which sectors are digital and e-commerce sectors.
If economic activity doesn’t rebound swiftly, young people may be forced to adapt
to the new reality of the labor market.
It dropped off as a cliff, right, six or seven months ago.
The one area that sort of stayed with us and continued to grow
has been software engineering and product management, that's been particularly strong.
There will always be a strong demand for, kind of, technical experience.
It’s always been the case that there has been an undersupply of engineering, data science and so on.
Those who are able to learn new skills may be best placed to respond
to their reduced employment prospects.
Tell me about the skills that you developed during the lockdown to essentially develop your brand.
So, I kind of, in this time, I took to go back to the whiteboard
and think of how to restructure everything. And I realized, okay, even though
it wasn’t my initial idea to go online, I decided that it was a good place to start.
So, I taught myself how to make a website, I set up my Instagram account and slowly started
to build a brand from my home using the tools that were available to me.
Teresa has been building off her online brand and is launching a collection in a physical store this fall.
I have been embroidering, I’ve been knitting and sewing, and just really getting creative,
and using that as an outlet and it’s been really exciting and therapeutic as well.
Hi everyone, thank you so much for watching.
Have you struggled to find work, or have you learned a new skill
Tell us about your experiences in the comments section,
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