is that one that employs the most or one that pays the most seems a bit misleading

and that figure is way above what you see in my industry- scientific research, i graduated 13 years ago and was happy i was on 10.5k starting!

That’s my point kimbers- folk are seduced by the headlines.

I do agree that many graduates are somewhat misguided and believe that getting a bit of paper will lead to vast riches an ting, but then that’s cos our society constantly bombards us with messages that the only way you can possibly be happy is to own loads of stuffs and have lots of money. And if you don’t then you are somehow ‘worthless’.

It’s a fair point all I hear is with a degree you’ll earn X amount more than those with out one, guess what I’m not!

In regards to immigration you illustrate the positives and negatives, I think instead of saying you can’t have that job Mr Polish man we should say you have to have conversational English and standards should be set.

I work for a kind of building company we employ mostly eastern europeans to build, with the exception of one team. All the complaints are about well you guessed it, they have no qualifications and have never been trained they just wing it. They are very hard working and have learnt a lot, but I certainly would not get one of my firms buildings!

Yeh I wonder what there might be in London that the government would have to pay for……hang on it’s coming to me…..mmmmmm.

So if we know that London government spending per head is realtively HIGH, but the nifty map above shows that relative to GDP government spending is very LOW, we can the deduce that London is the MOST PRODUCTIVE PART OF THE COUNTRY PER HEAD OF THE POPULATION!

There is little doubt that 24 hour News requires any item to be sensationalised to some extent. Nevertheless, no one should make light of the tragedy of youth unemployment.

There seems to be two parallel trends taking place:

1. Highly qualified young people who for cyclical reasons are struggling to find the correct or any employment at the moment. This is an enormous waste of talent and very frustrating for those involved. However, this should be a temporary problem, unlike…

2. The increasing numbers of people who leave education without the necessary skills to gain meaningful employment. In other parts of the world, highly qualified graduates would earn the same as many of these unskilled people. Little wonder where the jobs are going! This is a real tragedy for which there is no short term fix. Recovering from the catastrophe of education unleashed by Castle and her mob will take far more time to rectify.

Good luck to any of the 1m out there. Its tough.

Just think,with one million young people out there looking for work,
the Downturn Abbey brigade are going to kick one million people of
sickness benefits to look for work.Oh the joys of Conservative government.

r point 2 from team hurtmoreit was always thus.
the big difference w\s that in the past those poorly educated people [ its a standard distribution they are just the least bright in our society it is not the fault of education teachers or the system – some people are just “thick” ] could swap there brawn for money rather than their brains.
They could be labourers, work in coal the steel industry and manufacturing generally and earn good wages doing this. These days almost all jobs require some sort of skill being communication, inter personal whatever as we shift to a more service based economy. These people will be lost unless we alter the economic base rather than the education system.
Same problem different solution.
I am not saying everyone who does /did a manual job is/was thick.

EDIT: dont know if this was covered but the 1 million is the number looking for work not the number unemployed so it does include FT students but they are not unemployed.

the big difference w\s that in the past those poorly educated people [ its a standard distribution they are just the least bright in our society it is not the fault of education teachers or the system – some people are just “thick” ] could swap there brawn for money rather than their brains.

That’s an interesting point of view, there were certainly people in my school who got all the help from the teachers and were just not interested or capable. Why would the steel industry want to employ “thick” people!

to move big heavy lumps of steel around, empty crucibles etc – UNSKILLED MANUAL LABOUR- rather than work from the tech drawings for example. Do we need to employ graduates as labourers? They also got pretty decent money for doing this as well.
I am not saying everyone who works/worked in the steel industry was thick – how many caveats does a post need?