A willingness to work hard, learn, and stick with it

Over nine million people are neither working nor showing signs of willingly looking for work.

Hmmm. That’s around 20% of the working population. Not good.

And Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall has admitted the situation is ‘dire’. Agreed.

But she has no hesitation in blaming the previous government, ‘with millions of people denied the support they need to get work and get on at work’. Isn’t there a problem with this statement? It seems to imply that the state has a duty – formal or otherwise – to help people into work.

The message seems to be that without the state, people are incapable of organising their own life.

I agree there are times and places for everything, and help is often just that — helpful. But people used to help themselves more than they seem inclined to these days. That made it easier to identify the work-shy.

We used to look for job vacancies and then make a move to muscle in on the prospective employer’s shortlist for interviews. The need for a job was more than enough to spur us on. There were a range of tools available to everyone: sheer determination, a foot in the door, stubbornness, persistent phone calls and a never say die attitude.

Yes, people complained the job they were chasing wasn’t necessarily the one they wanted, but the view was that it was often easier to find a better job if you were actually in employment.

Now, it seems, we have created a huge work avoidance scheme and labelling to go with it. Paying people to sit at home during lockdowns didn’t help and the price for that is a resistance to actually going outside the home to work because of the various emotional and mental tags that get bandied around.

In the 60s and early 70s, we worried about the jobless figures and our nation’s trade figures. We wanted to export more than we imported.

Now we have very little to export and a government that believes public spending paid for through high taxes can fuel economic success. Add the fact that ten times as many youngsters now go into higher education than in their grandparents’ era, and we have another funding time bomb about to go off.

Once upon a time, people went to university to qualify for a profession. The market needed that level of training – but not for everyone. It was for specific sectors requiring aptitude and specific skills. Parents, a grant or bursary, an industry sponsor, or part-time jobs financed my generation through studies.

Now, over 40% of school leavers go into higher education regardless of whether we need their skills when they complete their studies. A degree (and they come in all shapes and subjects these days) hasn’t guaranteed them a chance of employment in their chosen subject or field, nor has it filled the roles we need to make the economy strong again.

I remember, at a dinner table discussion about higher education, a father stated he wanted both his children to go to university. I asked why. What career did they have in mind? Did they feel they had a vocation? Was it for a job that needed a degree level of study? No, he replied, they don’t have a clue what they want to do, but I’m determined they should go. All youngsters should go. They’ll enjoy it.

OK, my friend, if you feel that way, you pay for it, but don’t expect the taxpayer to prop up a system we don’t need. When young adults leave university, a huge proportion of them take a job, simply because they need a job. How much they earn depends on whether they repay their student debt, and the situation now seems out of control.

Nearly 1.8m people each owe £50K or more because of being a student. The government (i.e. the taxpayers) will write off millions of pounds because those students will never earn enough or not reach the threshold in time to pay it all back.

Students may complain (after the fact) about the debt, when they need to earn enough to repay it, but the likelihood of struggling was quite clear at the outset.

And so, when they leave, they line up for job vacancies alongside debt free youngsters who have by then, probably been earning (and enhancing their skills) for two or three years, and against older, very experienced people – even retirees forced to work well beyond their supposed retirement age.

Undoubtedly, more and more organisations are open to non-graduate employees. In fact, nearly half of UK employers say they’re happy to hire people with no higher education experience. What’s becoming important again is a willingness to work hard, learn, and stick with it.

Coupled with this is a widespread aversion to work, so much so that we seem to have become a nation that doesn’t understand what makes the world go around.

‘I have worked, but I left the job after a couple of weeks,’ declared the youngster. ‘I didn’t feel I was getting the right respect for my qualifications and what I can do.’

Forgive me for sounding old-fashioned, but did you consider that earning respect would come with spending enough time on the job to prove yourself? In any situation, respect has to be earned – it is not a right.