Joe Waters, Gloucestershire Socialist Party
The number of unemployed young people reached an eleven-year high at the end of 2024. Almost one million 16 to 24-year-olds, around one in seven, are not in work, education or training. As the economy falters, bosses are talking about making more job cuts this year. And young people will face the brunt of these in hospitality and other sectors.
Young people also have to deal with the high cost of living, driven by corporate greed, and continued attacks on benefit claimants, driven by Labour’s commitment to making the working class pay for capitalism’s economic crisis.
But it’s the economy which has failed young people, not the other way around. There are endless uses for human creativity and labour. There’s no shortage of houses which need building, infrastructure which needs improving, goods which need producing, or vital services which need delivering. There’s also no shortage of money to pay for all these things. However it is sitting in the bank accounts of the ultra-wealthy, who are only interested in maximising their profits. Capitalists, lacking faith that their system has the stability needed to guarantee them return on investment, prioritise short-term gains over needed investment.
Starmer’s Labour government serves the interests of the capitalist class and won’t fight for young people looking for jobs with decent pay and conditions. All they’re willing to offer is a pitiful rise in the minimum wage and training schemes designed to force young people into exploitative working arrangements. Nationalisation of major industries and putting them in the hands of workers ourselves is considered totally off the table.
Capitalism offers young people no decent future. Our entire society runs on the labour of the working class and that is the basis of all the profits which the bosses claim as their own. We need to be able to democratically plan what is done with the wealth we create so we can plan production and create jobs based on what we need, not on what makes a profit for a few.
