UNEMPLOYED YOUTH

Evening Star, Issue 18668, 24 June 1924, Page 2

UNEMPLOYED YOUTH

GRAVE PROBLEMS IN SCOTLAND. A grave feature of the unemployment problem is that more than 40 per cent, of the unemployed in Scotland are young men between the ages of eighteen and twentyeight (says the ‘ Scotsman ’). In seven towns there are 13,444 young men between eighteen and twenty-eight who were unemployed, and of that number 60.6 per cent, are unskilled. This number represents 40,7 per cent, of the total registration. In Edinburgli 40 per cent, of those on the register are under twenty-eight, and 46.9 per cent, of them are unskilled. In one place in Scotland the percentage of unskilled is as high as 88 per cent. The significance of those figures can hardly bo missed. Before the war the term “ unskilled ” was generally applied to laborers, who, though not being apprentices, bad a measure of skill and training. The plasterer’s laborer and the engineer’s laborer, though “ unskilled,” had a practical knowledge which an untrained man did not possess. To-day the young men between eighteen and twenty-eight who are “ unskilled ” have not had the opportunity of employment, and are without that considerable degree of technical knowledge possessed by the plasterer’s or the engineer’s laborer. Many of those men entered the Army in 1914, and find themselves, ten years later, without the prospect of being trained to follow a trade. Their position is deplorable.