Rural unemployment

This article is about an academic paper published in ‘Critical Medical Humanities’ (http://mh.bmj.com/content/41/1/40.full).The Paper considers the Government’s workfare programmes. It provides explanations for unemployment (suggesting people are unemployed because they have the wrong attitude or outlook) and means to achieve employability or ‘job readiness’ (by possessing work-appropriate attitudes and beliefs) to demonstrate how the Government is rebranding unemployment as a “psychological disorder”. According to researchers, benefit claimants are being forced to take part in positive thinking courses in an effort to change their personalities. This includes being bombarded with motivational text messages – such as “success is the only option”, “we’re getting there” and “smile at life” – and have to take part in “pointless” team-building exercises such as building towers out of paper clips.

I have worked really hard in the past to try and find resources to support young people who want to live and work in agricultural roles in rural areas. It has been a largely fruitless and difficult process – largely because Further Education thinks along “urban tramlines”. Living and working in rural England is desperately difficult. Whilst I have some sympathy with the need to remove the opportunity for young people to “opt out” of the labour market by drawing benefits, I feel the policy profiled below being “boiled up” by Vince – needs some careful thinking lest it chases more challenged young people out of rural England.

This article tells us: “Coalition plans to make it more difficult for 18- to 21-year-olds to go straight on to benefits after school, and instead require them to work or study, are to be announced by the business secretary, Vince Cable. He will hint at the new “earn or learn” plans, being discussed as a possible centrepiece of a new coalition agreement, in a speech to the Association of Colleges. Government figures show 18.5% of boys aged 18 and 15.3% of girls are Neets – not in education, employment or training. The total is 115,000. The degree to which a benefit sanction would be included, and on what terms, is still up for discussion within the coalition, with Conservatives favouring a sanction.

Cable will say in his speech: “The issue is this: the government has a clear vision for 16- to 18-year-olds, where we are raising the participation age and increasing support for English and maths. But for young people over 18, the offer is much less clear. There’s generous educational support for some, while, for others, financial support through the benefits system can actually prevent them from learning.”

This iconic number is all over the newspapers and wider media. It is important to remember that a sizeable part of this number represents students looking for work and studying however we mustn’t underestimate the scale of the issue. I trailed the work I am doing to seek to pilot a project in Lincolnshire and North Notts which will tackle the issue of youth unemployment and out-migration in one rural area by building the portfolio working and self employment skills of a group of young people.

At the nub of this scheme and perhaps something for us to think about more widely in the context of rural sustainability and the stalling of the growth agenda, is moving a focus onto cooperative and innovative models of local cooperation and employment based on local opportunities rather than expecting everyone can go down the traditional career route. A route which is rapidly disappearing in the current economic climate and which in any case has denuded many rural areas of their young people.

The article itself tells us: “Youth unemployment has broken through the 1 million mark to a record high and theUK’s wider unemployment rate has climbed to a 15-year high. The government sought to blame the deterioration in the jobs market on pressures from the eurozone debt crisis but came under attack for ignoring problems at home Fears that young people are bearing the brunt of Britain’s economic slowdown were underscored by official figures showing there were 1.02 million unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds between July and September. One in five young people are now out of work.”

 According to this article:

“The Government is to launch the next part of its strategy to combat youth unemployment, with the formal launch of sector-based work academies acrossEngland. The new academies will offer a combination of training, work experience and a guaranteed job interview to up to 50,000 people over the next two years, with many going to young people. Together with the Work Programme and the Government’s Work Experience scheme it will mean support for up to 150,000 young people over the next few months and 250,000 people over the next two years. Sector-based work academies will operate in industries based on local labour market demand, including construction, contact centres, hospitality, logistics, and retail. In the wider economy there are currently over 90,000 vacancies in retail, over 44,000 in hospitality and 11,000 vacancies in construction.”

I would like to understand what “Local labour market demand” means in terms of small rural communities and how the almost inevitable concentration of these vacancies in larger urban settlements will be considered to ensure the programme supports the economic development of all parts of England as equally and effectively as possible. The scale of the challenge is further reinforced by this article in the telegraph which reveals:

“Unemployment has soared more than expected to 2.57m – the biggest total in 17 years – while the number of young people without jobs reached a record high, official figures showed today.

I personally feel the challenges facing the young rural unemployed are really concerning and would welcome Government action to address this theme specifically.