The frustration of recent graduates in the UK today is building. My year group left sixth form in 2006. After following the guidance of teachers, parents and careers advisors we emerge with glowing A-levels and a plethora of extra curricular activities with which to ingratiate our UCAS form. After a gruelling round of interviews and open days we finally landed our prized places at top Universities. Fantastic, I have my glowing bag of results (A,A,A,B at A-level and a 2:1 degree from Royal Holloway) and now it’s off into the big wide world to find a spot of paid employment. After all, tuition fees seemed to have a sneaky way of increasing startlingly year on year during my course, rising from £3000 in 2006 to £3,225 for the 2009-20010 academic year. But no matter, who cares about being saddled with debt when you have been promised that you’ll be able to attain a highly paid job after graduation?
We all worked ourselves into the ground cramming for GCSEs, AS Levels, A Levels and finally our degree examinations. From the age of 13 I had to undergo stringent examinations every summer for 5 years (SATS, GCSE mocks, GCSEs, AS Levels, A-levels). The exams are not getting easier; no matter what trumped up statistics the tabloid and broadsheet journalists’ alike enjoy parroting, probably to make themselves feel better about their own inadequate results.
At every stage we must prove our intelligence, prove we are worthy of our place in the system with endless essays, research projects, verbal presentations, dissertations and exams. Until finally you emerge from the jubilant graduation ceremony convinced that you have once and for all proved to the world that you are an intelligent, skilled human being; an asset to society, and a sure investment for any company.
Yet, so many of us found ourselves signing on this summer, unable to find paid employment despite our glowing records of achievement. And let us be clear here, we were not being picky. This was not a case of ‘the jobs on offer are beneath me’. During the depressing, dark days when my friends and I were making that thirty minute trek to the job centre (we could not afford the bus fare) we would have taken any job which would pay the bills and indeed we did. It is, as anyone who has been in this situation will remember, the most dispiriting experience visiting the bizarrely titled ‘Jobcentre Plus’. What exactly the ‘Plus’ stands for is unclear, potentially it stands for ‘Plus extra ineptitude’. For anyone who has never had the joy of making the fortnightly jaunt to the jobcentre let me enlighten you… Every two weeks you must meet with an ‘advisor’ (again a hilariously inappropriate term) at an allotted time. You enter the centre clutching your little paper progress booklet (inside which your job hunting exploits are neatly inked) and approach the jobcentre employees working at the entrance. In Hendon Jobcentre Plus these people were invariably chatting about last night’s drunken exploits or on their phones to their friends chatting about the same topic. When you would bend over backwards just to get any job it is overwhelmingly frustrated to be greeted by people who are doing their own jobs so badly. After this encounter your tiny paper book is taken off and given to an advisor and you are required to wait for your meeting. Considering they have these meetings booked in, in allotted time slots, you would expect a prompt response. This was never the case. The longest I was left waiting for my advisor meeting was an hour and a half. The meeting itself lasts a mere one minute, the ‘advisor’ checks your book with a swift glance to see if you have applied for anything, hands you a piece of paper to sign to prove that you turned up and then waves you on your way. So much for the advice Mr ‘advisor’.
Once or twice I was referred to a woman whose task it was to get young people into work. Finally, I thought, someone who will help me and give a damn about my situation! No such luck. She told me that it was great that I had a degree and said I would have no trouble finding a decent job. She then proceeded to give me a job application to work in WH Smith at a main London railway station staking shelves at night for minimum wage. I was desperate so I applied.
The Jobcentre did not help me find a job. I eventually got a Christmas temp. job at the stationers Paperchase. I was filled with a sense of fierce optimism on my last trip to that wretched place. I had been told, after quizzing the ‘advisor’, that once I had found a job the jobcentre would pay a contribution towards my travel and help me buy appropriate work clothing. This struck me as a very sensible scheme, as it meant that once you had secured a job you could afford to get to it and be dressed appropriately. If you remember that on jobseekers allowance you are paid only £50 per week, which is immediately withdrawn as soon as you find a job, and your new job won’t pay you till the end of the month then you do get caught in an impossible situation - unable to afford to get to work and cling on to the job you have finally secured. My ‘advisor’ assured me that when I came to sign off arrangement for travel expenses and clothing could be made. I strode into the jobcentre with my head held high, and was ushered into an office to sign off with some woman who I had never met before who seemed to be more senior than the lowly ‘advisors’ in the open plan main room. She took down the details of my new employer and then bid me fair well. Hang on, I enquired, what about the extra financial help so I can actually get into work for the next four weeks? She then calmly explained that as I had already worked one day with the company I no longer qualified for any help. According to the jobcentre, if you can afford travel in on one day you can clearly afford it for a whole month. No, I was not going to take this ridiculous assertion especially as the ‘advisor’ had not told me any of this information. He had explained that as long as I came into the jobcentre as soon as I could all would be well. This senior woman seemed to expect me to have told my new employer – ‘No, sorry, thanks for the job offer and all. But I can’t come to work for you tomorrow, despite having been unemployed for months, as I have to go and grovel for travel benefit from my local Jobcentre Plus.’ Now that is not a conversation that is going to bode well with a new employer, nor a conversation someone desperate for work wants to be having. I was so eager to get back into the workplace and start earning money from myself instead of leaning on the welfare state that I was penalised. The senior advisor refused to believe that one of her employees had told me I could claim support as long as I came into the jobcentre at the next available opportunity, even after I described the man in question in great detail.
Not only did I receive no support with travel, but the woman entrusted to help young people in the area get back into work made me certify that I had been taken on by Paperchase on a Work Trial – this had in fact been a training day for a job I had already secured but she clearly needed to up her figures of young people in work trial placements.
Great, so she was taking credit for my hard work; scouring London, CV in hand, for months with no support from her, whilst her organisation refused to even help me get to this new job. A tactic that would have perpetuated my unemployed status had my friends not been charitable to lend me money to buy a travelcard. So much for ‘Jobcentre Plus’, a more appropriate title would be ‘Jobcentre Minus’.
The only piece of parting advice I gleaned from the unsympathetic senior advisor was to apply for working tax credit as soon as possible to help me on my low earnings. I dutifully called them, only to be informed that as I have no children and am not disabled I do not qualify as I am under 25. On such low earnings if I were four years older I would qualify. Are they presuming that as I am under 25 I eat less, travel less and don’t need a roof over my head?
The Welfare State has failed us, the education system has failed us and we are left to fall through the cracks in the system. The bright young things of Britain, full of talent and imagination, are now clinging on to dead end jobs for dear life. Our concerns used to be: ‘can I learn the financial policies of King Henry VII in time for my exam?!’ Now we worry ‘Will I be able to afford to eat by the end of the month?’.
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