The bleak job prospects facing today’s young people will be familiar to their parents. Talk of a “lost generation” was common 30 years ago too.
My brush with unemployment in the 1980s was blessedly brief, but I recall the disappointment at the mail that brought nothing, the crawling hours of a non-working day and the longing to be among the commuters heading for the station.
I was well educated, confident and middle class. I found a job and have been in work ever since. Better times will come for many of today’s young, and the best-equipped will put worklessness behind them. Policymakers may be right when they say that employment gaps can affect wages for years, if not decades, but I suspect that the most privileged will overcome them.