Oil and youth unemployment - are we back in the 1970s? New Learning from the Past: the Manpower Services Commission and Youth Training Scheme

When I started writing about the Youth Training Scheme and the Manpower Planning Commission last year, conditions with youth unemployment could arguably have been said to vaguely resemble the 1970s; since February and the institution of the war in Iran and the threat of an energy crisis, the parallels are now pretty alarming.

As my colleagues at Edge warned earlier this year government, learning lessons from the past at times of acute pressure is an antidote to reactive emergency politics. The two pieces for our Learning from the Past series: on the Youth Training Scheme, published last week, and the Manpower Services Commission, are particularly apposite: together, they are clear indications of the pitfalls of deficit models and the overemphasis on training and skills development in young people that does nothing to address the structural factors which suppress demand.

Without effective interventions into job creation and employer behaviours, training alone can only influence young people’s long-term outcomes (and therefore the condition of the nation) so far.