It is becoming increasingly evident that even when western economies move out of recession in the coming months, the problem of high levels of unemployment will present a formidable challenge to most governments. Understandably, politicians fret about the likely political and social effect of high levels of unemployment, especially amongst the young and the over fifties.
Let us look at some statistics. In Spain the unemployment rate is currently heading to almost 20 per cent. Ireland is forecast to have 15 per cent of its working age population unemployed in a few months time. In Britain the rate of unemployment among 18 to 24 year-olds is now 17 per cent. In Malta the figures are not so high. In my opinion, this is because of the high rate of underemployment in the public service that employs far more people than it really needs to.
Yvette Cooper, the British Works and Pensions Secretary, is responsible for addressing the issue of high levels of unemployment in the coming several months. The UK government intends to introduce a scheme costing £1 billion to create 150,000 "soft jobs" or "socially useful jobs".
Yvette Cooper wants to avoid the consequences of doing little or nothing to address this problem. She states: "Many young people were denied the help they needed in the recessions of 1980s and 1990s and ended up out of work for months and years. Too many never got a start in the jobs market. We are determined not to let that happen again."
This sentiment is shared by President Obama who promised to create millions of "green" jobs to address the problem of high levels of unemployment in the US.
In the UK these "soft" jobs will include those of sports coaches, classroom assistants, social carers, forestry workers, and child carers. Other jobs will be based around the refurbishment of old houses and recycling projects.
Not everyone is happy that the creation of these socially useful jobs will be a price worth paying to address the high levels of unemployment that are likely to become endemic in many western economies. Conservative politicians and economic analysts believe that this could be a recipe for even more problems in the future as a result of excessive public spending to finance these jobs.
This reasoning is, in my opinion, too short sighted and does not discount the future economic and social benefits of having more young people working, rather wasting their time in the dole queues. In Malta, we had some experience of this experiment in the 1970s when the labour corps was formed to reduce the high levels of unemployment.
Our economy was in the transition phase adapting from being one based on military spending to one that gradually embraced free market principles. The labour corps may not have been structured well enough and was certainly marketed in the worst possible way. But it had no doubt given an opportunity to many young people of varying educational ability to help themselves and not remain a burden on taxpayers for too long.
I know of workers who joined this corps and eventually went to University. Some of them became excellent bankers, lawyers and accountants. Others learned a skill and have made a success of their lives. One wonders whether they would have obtained such a success had they not been given a chance to earn a living by working, rather than depend on dole money.
If our unemployment problems become more acute, we need to follow what countries like the UK and the US are doing and devise schemes that will give our young people, and also those over 50, a chance to earn a living through their work. Such schemes should aim to be a temporary solution and should therefore be combined with strong elements of skills training.
However, much the government will aim to train young people in their teens to acquire a skill that will make them employable, there will always be several thousands of them who will go through their normal schooling years without achieving much educationally. We must not give up on these young people. A scheme that offers temporary socially useful jobs to the unemployed will more than justify its cost to the taxpayers.
johncassarwhite@yahoo.com