Young people more uncertain than ever about their career options, according to the OECD

Education & Employers responds to new research from the OECD showing a huge mismatch between ‘traditional’ career aspirations and the current job market.

UK charity, Education & Employers, is calling for urgent action to avert a ‘lost generation youth unemployment crisis’ that is now taking hold in the UK.  The call comes on the day that the OECD publishes ‘The State of Global Teenage Career Preparation’ a major report of 700,000 15 year olds in 80 countries on the huge mismatch globally between young people’s career aspirations and the future job types available.

Little Change

Whilst jobs have grown rapidly since the year 2000 in the digital, computing, data science, renewable energy and green sectors, the jobs that young people aspire to has hardly changed in 25 years. And young people are more uncertain about their future careers than ever before according to research.

NEETs

Official figures for the UK from the ONS show there are almost 1 million (987,000) young people not in education or employment (NEET) the highest figure in over 10 years.

Immigration

Yet at the same time employers are struggling to recruit, leaving the UK facing a skills shortage and creating a reliance on recruitment from overseas for jobs such as, biological scientists, bricklayers, care workers, carpenters, graphic designers, laboratory and pharmaceutical technicians and roofers.

A Worrying Trend

In the UK the study found that 46.4% of young people are uncertain about their career options – a rise from 24.6% in 2018, placing the UK as one of the worst rated countries out of the 80 countries featuring in the research. Moreover, their aspirations are concentrated around a small number of mainly traditional jobs with 50% of young people apparently focused on just 10 jobs which include actor, doctor and lawyer.  Very large numbers of young people are also focusing on jobs such as social media influencers and sports stars where the chances of succeeding in these areas are very slim, rather than training for employment in areas that are expanding and in need of resourcing.

Nick Chambers, CEO of Education & Employers, said about the impending crisis:

“We are letting future generations down when it comes to preparing them for the world of work, with nearly 1 million young people not working or studying in the UK. That is first and foremost a waste of their individual potential, but also at a macro level, it’s a massive cost to the UK economy and to taxpayers. 

“Young people’s knowledge of jobs and the opportunities open to them is largely driven by people they know, as well as TV and social media.  In many cases it leads them to aspire to a very narrow number of traditional roles that are not in synch with the growth-generating roles that the UK needs. It also results in unequal access to role models and understanding of routes into careers, creating a divide between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’

“We need urgent action today to secure growth and full youth employment tomorrow. This means immediately scaling up our efforts to help young people see what they can be. Our charity’s mission is to ensure that every young person in our country, wherever they live, whatever their parents’ or carers’ circumstances, can meet a diverse range of volunteers to hear first-hand either in person or virtually about jobs and the world of work.

“This can be done quickly and easily, and swiftly scaled to cover millions of young people through initiatives such as our ‘Inspiring the Future’ programme, where a volunteer from the world of work simply chats informally to pupils either in primary or secondary schools, inspiring them about their job and career journey. This combination of either in-person or interactive virtual chats has the potential to revolutionise how children and young people see the opportunities open to them – giving them the chance to meet a diverse range of people doing different jobs, regardless of their geographic or socioeconomic background or family connections. “One hour a year from each of our volunteers regularly throughout a child’s school years will have a hugely positive impact on their future life choices. Our extensive research has shown continuous interventions starting in primary school are needed”.

Volunteers from all levels, from apprentices to CEOs, and across all economic sectors, from AI analysts to zoologists can sign up and be instantly connected with young people in the classroom.  Schools and colleges can integrate these visits into their career-related learning or the taught curriculum by searching the database of volunteers and inviting them at the click of a button, just like on-line shopping.

Over 452,000 children and young people every year are meeting and chatting with people from the world of work through the Inspiring the Future platform. 92,000 people have registered as volunteers together with 12,500 primary and secondary schools. It has already enabled 4,950,000 interactions between young people and people from the world of work.

The charity is seeking support to massively expand this reach so that every young person can hear from a career role model. As a matter of urgency, we want to increase from just under 0.5 million a year children and young people to 1 million and then to 5 million. Now is the time for action to guarantee that our young people fully understand the opportunities open to them and that we have the future workforce we need to ensure a vibrant and prosperous economy and society for years to come.