Of course all businesses should value hard working talent, but the introduction of a compulsory Living Wage could hinder more young people than it helps.
Nearly a million young Britons are shopping for entry-level employment. They want a chance to prove their worth. They want to profit from experience, bulk up their CVs and showcase their talents, but making employers pay higher wages is likely to mean more young people lose a vital first shot.
This week is Living Wage week, a fantastic initiative to encourage businesses to voluntarily pay the Living Wage; that is £7.45 an hour and £8.55 in London. By promoting the cause Ed Miliband and Boris Johnson are highlighting an important problem that affects 4.28 million people. Organisations should try their best to pay prized employees enough to cover the bare essentials, and this should be the minimum standard. But any shift towards compulsorily higher wages will force a trade-off between jobs and pay. And young people will be the ones who miss out.
Our youth inject zest and energy into the workplace, they fizz with ideas and have the power to give businesses a new lease of life. But they require employers to give them the tools to progress and forge a clear route up.
It should be easy for businesses to make this investment and put young people on the books, but to do this we need to make the 957,000 young unemployed look like less of a risk. This is especially true for the 18-24 year olds who have been out of work for more than two years; the number has doubled since 2008. They are written off by employers, their potential ignored and are left stranded.
The most practical way to give them the skills and opportunities they need is through apprenticeships. The minimum pay for an apprentice is £2.65 per hour, which is well within most employers budgets. Last year 200,000 people in England achieved apprenticeships and, encouragingly, over 80% of 19-24 year olds went on to full employment. These low paid but high investment schemes are working and have done since the Guilds of the Middle Ages.
Apprenticeships plug the gap and give young people lacking workplace skills a ladder to climb. In her seminal report the expert Alison Wolf identified apprenticeships as "a key route into skilled employment and higher returns in terms of career progression and future earnings." The bright young employee can absorb their surroundings, learn from superiors and grow with the organisation. On average apprentices earn over £100,000 more throughout their lifetime than other employees. Ultimately these schemes give more people, more opportunities.
Being in work makes you happy. It is the best way out of poverty and towards money and status, bolsters self-esteem, gives a sense of purpose and identity for workers and their families; parental unemployment carries a two to three fold increased rate of emotional or behavioural disorder in children.
As such, people should be empowered to take the jobs offered to them. By bringing down the spiralling costs of living and taking decisive action on food, fuel and housing costs the government could go a long way to help us all. They should champion free travel and put pressure on companies to give the young unemployed a hand with free fares. For instance, earlier this year a collective of bus companies announced plans to discount travel for NEETs.
By making it cheaper to get by, creating more opportunities and kick starting economic growth the government will provide a sustainable way to move young people into work.
Follow Lottie Dexter on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Lottiedexter
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Before the introduction of the MW there was varied wages after more and more companies began paying the minimum wage as standard.
Many people saw their income reduced over several years where as before MW they had been paid an above average wage they had then had it brought into line with the MW.
The living wage will become the minimum wage and wage increases will be in line with it.
These kind of changes give a false feeling of change and mask the real issues of inequality and the gap between rich and poor in this country.
2) Apprenticeship schemes are already exempt from the national minimum wage requirements, and this would surely also be the case under a living wage scheme.
3) With nearly a million young people currently unemployed in the UK, are we really to believe a slight change in minimum pay levels will rob kids of the chance to work?
The idea that people should work for less than it costs to live is straight out of a Dickens novel. If wages have to go up for people to be brought out of poverty, consumers and businesses will simply have to pay for it. Some might say that's fair.
Bah! Humbug!
But i agree with Ms Dexter's conclusion: there has to be some offset balancing agent when two candidates of equal merit/ability, but one is young and the other is established - a sort of affirmative action to raise the chances of the young (not to the point where it tips over the other way and the established is punished, but let's say roughly 3/5 in favour of the young sort of thing)
Something has to balance of the PSI-assumed risk for the employer to make him more likely to treat inequal candidates equally.
direct them to a place where they can learn a trade live in a purpose built accommodation blocks
with cheap rents.....this would allow them to learn and earn and no longer be a drain on society...
it would be like national service for the unemployed.It would also ensure that the relevant skills shortages are eradicated................if you just whine on that employers aren't doing enough in local areas well you wont get far reducing total youth unemployment................radical measures for desperate times..............................
Indeed, these people get pittance.
Granted they are in training but they still need to live and buy food
Let's keep the "Living Wage" as a benchmark rather than a legal requirement, else we risk higher unemployment, esp. in labour-intensive service sectors.