Britons without jobs

Press, 16 August 1976, Page 6

Britons without jobs

By LIONEL WALSH, NZPAReuter correspondent London For thousands of young Britons, this is a summer of shattered hopes as they look for jobs for the first time. Not since the Depression years of the 1930 s have there been so many unemployed in Britain — 1,460,000, or 6.3 per cent of the work-force. Youngsters trying to enter the job market are the worst affected. One estimate, by the Institute of Careers Officers, is that 350,000 teen-agers are without employment. Some 14,000 have never had a job since they left school a year ago. University graduates and 16-year-old school-leavers alike are finding the society that gave them an education cannot give them work. Jobs in industry have been on the decline for years, but now the Civil Service payroll, too, is being cut by 46,000 over the next three ’years. The result is that students who took arts courses find it particularly hard to land the jobs in administration, community services, and even teaching that used to be

lopen to them. Science graduates, who can contribute tc the nation’s industrial output, stand the best chance ol a job. Graduate bus drivers and barmaids, labourers, and odd-job men are part of the scene in provincial university towns. Local education officers report that there are as many as six school-leavers chasing every vacancy. The Government plans tc spend £24M on job training and subsidies for firms taking on school-leavers, but it can offer little relief in Britain’s present economic climate of grim and painful austerity, in which Ministers istrive to make up for years I of overspending by ruthllessly slashing budgets. ' The maintenance of full employment — a basic objective of successive British Governments, both Labour and Conservative since the war — has had to (be shelved for the time being. The watchword now, in (the words of the Chancellor jof the Exchequer (Mr Denis ; Healey) is: “We have got to (Stop living on tick”. i The Labour Government

believes it has no alternative , to harsh policies, in view of this year’s precipitous falls .of the pound and the prospect of a collapse of foreign confidence if the GovernI ment takes no action to rel duce its borrowing. Recent Government estimates put the public-sector debt in foreign currencies at , SUS7OOOM — with SUSBOOM ; due in interest payments ; this year. Mr Healey last month 1 presented a deflationary , package that will take E2OOOM out of the economy in the next financial year, beginning in April. There are two sides to the package, and each is bad news for the unemployed. : Government spending is being cut by EIOOOM. and employers will have to pay la similar amount : in increased national ■ insurance contributions — a measure denounced as a , “payroll tax” by the Opposi- ' tion Conservatives. ' The Government admits that the package will mean i 70,000 fewer jobs — almost ' all of them in the public : sector — by early 1978, al'though unemployment figures should be much improved bv then.