A survey shows young people are finding strategies to cope with the downturn but more help is needed. Joe Lepper reports.

Children & Young People Now
19 January 2010

Young people are remaining surprisingly resilient in dealing with the recession, in spite of mounting debt, lack of money for leisure and fears over career prospects.

According to the latest British Youth Council (BYC) report about young people's attitudes to the recession, just under two-thirds said they are still managing to save regularly. A similar proportion of the 485 12- to 25-year-olds surveyed have an ideal career in mind and three-quarters said they are happy with their current situation, such as a job or course.

But the report, entitled Weathering the Recession, says young people are finding it increasingly hard to remain this optimistic.

Concerns about job security are leading to just under half of respondents who are employed to work beyond their basic job description. One in 10 young workers are not taking their full holiday entitlement.
Unsurprisingly, the most despondent were those not in employment, education or training (Neets). A third of this group said they were pessimistic about their chances of getting work. Lack of experience was cited as a major barrier to work for around half of Neets.

BYC chair Alex Delaney says: "Employers can do more to help. There is a lot of talk about equal opportunities for older workers. That should apply to young people as well."

Ginny Lunn, the Prince's Trust's policy and development director, backs the BYC's focus on the resilience of young people. But, she says, "that strength gets eaten away the longer a person is out of work".

She welcomes recent government policies to prioritise support for the long-term unemployed, such as December's white paper Building Britain's Recovery: Achieving Full Employment, which pledged to create 100,000 work and training opportunities.

Lunn adds though that young people can do more to help themselves. "Our message is that there are jobs and support out there, through organisations such as ourselves or the volunteering group V. It is a question of finding out about them."

Debt is another major concern raised in the BYC report. Just over half of respondents said debt was part of their or their families' lives and around half said that they had an overdraft.

Neil Munroe, a director at credit referencing firm Equifax, is not surprised that debt is commonplace among young people. "The credit boom started in the mid-1980s, so all those surveyed here will have only known a culture of debt. It is an accepted part of life for them, whereas for the older generation there is perhaps still a stigma attached to debt."

Leisure and sport activities are taking a back seat to saving and meeting debt repayments, the survey also suggests. Seven out of 10 young people say cost is a barrier to taking part in organised activities. Only half knew of local discounts available to young people and just under a third say their families are spending less on leisure because of the recession.

Lunn backs calls for more promotion of leisure discounts. "Councils and those running leisure need to do much more to promote any discounts that are available."

The report is now being handed to the government, while the BYC is calling for councils to be given more support regarding leisure discounts, emotional support schemes for young people to cope with the recession and more consultation with young people when devising economic policies. Job creation policies were ranked by young people as the most effective way to help young people cope with the recession.

Paul Fletcher, Rathbone's director for youth engagement, agrees that this should be ministers' top priority but dismisses calls for further help with leisure discounting. "Our research with Neets shows they want jobs and the skills to get jobs rather than playing five-a-side football every day. They are already savvy when it comes to leisure," he says.

SURVEY SNAPSHOT - How young people are weathering the recession

Undertaking relevant training: 43%
Updating skills: 40%
Networking with other organisations: 32%
Updating their CV: 38%
Going beyond basic job responsibilities: 44%
Not taking holiday/annual leave: 9%

80% have taken measures to safeguard job
70% say cost is preventing participation in leisure activities
63% still save money regularly
34% are unhappy with the state of their finances

Source: British Youth Council Weathering the Recession report, January 2010

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