To be Young and Unemployed in 2009

What must it be like to be young and unemployed in the current difficult climate? To have left school or university recently and find little or no prospects of a job in your area must be devastating.

Anyone who's been unemployed - or been given the sack - knows what a huge dent it makes in your morale. We're conditioned nowadays to value ourselves through our work; a huge number of the good feelings we have about ourselves are often tied up with what we do for a living. So the loss of it - or the prospect of never getting any - can set up a sadness akin to bereavement. It is a real loss, after all..... a loss of self-esteem, a loss of hope, a loss of power. For only when we're earning are we truly able to have control of our lives, to organise things as we want them.

So I feel particularly sorry for this new generation who have no job prospects in front of them. It means many will have to stay living at home with their parents for far longer than they'd hoped. It means many will have acres of time on their hands and no money to spend doing anything with it.
It'll mean a loss of dreams for many and the abandonment of ambition....they'll instead be marking time until they can find someone to employ them.

We need to take care of this generation, to offer them what help we can. I can only hope that some of the government schemes set up to help re-train them or occupy them or encourage them into volunteering are actually delivering on their promises. For if not, we face a future with a lost generation growing up never knowing what it's like to have a reason to get up in the morning, and a purpose to life.