We need real jobs, with pay we can actually live on
Kate Blanchard, West London Socialist Party
Graduate vacancies have dropped by nearly half in the past year – falling to only 8,383 listed in July – a survey by jobs website Adzuna has shown. With 500,000 undergraduate students progressing from UK universities every year, this has made already competitive vacancies impossible to achieve for most new graduates.
The youth unemployment rate has risen to 16.2% as of June. The Labour government has declared it a crisis of ‘NEETs’ – under 25s not in employment, education, or training.
The new Andy Burnham Labour government is proposing things like training schemes, employment advice, and temporary unpaid job placements to tackle this ‘crisis’. (See ‘Sainsbury’s work placement scheme: ‘They want young people to work for free’). Yet, this ignores the actual drivers of increasing unemployment.
Ever-larger profit
It’s not lack of ‘employment advice’ that’s making vacancies disappear, but that big business has been allowed to continuously cut costs in the name of driving ever-larger profits. They keep wages low, replace workers with climate-destroying AI, and extract more labour out of fewer workers.
Even more vacancies disappear as big companies are not willing to invest in training. When the ultra-wealthy want more profit, they inevitably try to squeeze it from the working class.
Labour’s proposed strategy shows that it isn’t willing or able to tackle this. It will do little to help graduates into meaningful, long-term employment that pays an actual living wage.
The Socialist Party proposes sharing out the work – fewer hours, for better pay, creating more meaningful jobs overall. Allowing workers to enjoy a better work-life balance.
To achieve that we fight for a socialist society that puts the working classes in control of deciding what is needed for the benefit of society, and not for the pockets of the ultra-wealthy.
