YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19799, 21 November 1927, Page 8

YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT.

One serious aspect of the prevalence of unemployment has been touched by the Chamber of Commerce in its resolution urging parents to keep their children a year longer at school rather than endeavour to seek occupations for them. There is no gainsaying the difficulty of finding employment for all tlm young people due to finish their schooling within a few weeks. Particularly will it be found difficult to place some of them in occupations for which they arc specially qualified by aptitudes and tastes. To keep them a little longer at school may therefore appear a ready and ultimately profitable way of meeting the difficulty. But it is not so completely a solution of the problem as it appears. These young people have arrived at an age when the cost of their maintenance is virtually equivalent to that of adults. Many of them, as it is, are enjoying a prolonged period of education already, being kept at school now only by dint of sacrifices their parents are making on their behalf. To extend the period by another

year will entail very severe financial hardship on these parents, and they may well feel compelled to accept whatever relief is offering in the way of employment short of the ideal they have set for their children. Work of some kind, even at a lower remuneration than would be wholly satisfactory, will have to be accepted by many. The question has complexities not to be met ..by the seemingly simple means of prolonging school life, whatever are the ultimate advantages to be reaped from that means. Students of the position ought not to shut their eyes to the part played by economic pressure in driving young people into the labour market. The position calls for examination in all its bearings, and makes imperative a thorough study of both its demand and supply aspects. At present there is a lack of specific and complete information concerning the number and classification of young people in need of early employment and the openings available for them. To improve on the existing haphazard way of doing things is desirable in any circumstances. The prevalence of unemployment merely emphasises that desirability. Some hard thinking is demanded, and ought to be given.