{"id":947,"date":"2017-05-09T06:44:58","date_gmt":"2017-05-09T06:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/?p=947"},"modified":"2017-05-04T14:48:57","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T14:48:57","slug":"mwr-western-world-accommodates-disadvantaged-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/making-work-real\/2017\/05\/mwr-western-world-accommodates-disadvantaged-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"MWR: How the Western World Accommodates for Disadvantaged Workers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Erika<\/a>
Erika Mantoura, first year business student at Southampton, inquires into unemployment.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Money. What a wonderful little thing, but that\u2019s only if you have it. \u2018What form of higher education are you going to go into to improve your employment prospects?\u2019 \u2018How are you going to support your family?\u2019 You see, I\u2019m part of that youth age group that have been screwed over by the 2008 financial crisis (Junankar, 2014) and I live in a poor area so I can\u2019t afford higher education, I need to earn money NOW! My parents don\u2019t have this social bank of contacts who can get me work experience (The Belfast Telegraph, 2016). I need to ensure that the global population\u2019s worst fear of permanent unemployment doesn\u2019t become my reality (The Economist, 2016) \u2013 what is my Government doing to help?<\/p>\n

God Save the Queen! I may not be able to bid my way into a company like City AM by paying for an internship (The Guardian, 2016), but I could do an Apprenticeship. In the last seven years, the number of Apprenticeship start-ups has gone up by 300,000 and 90% of apprentices stay in work (House of Commons, 2016; Apprenticeships, 2016). Now that\u2019s a statistic I like to hear. But even if that didn\u2019t work out, I could always go to the Prince\u2019s Trust. They\u2019ve given funding to over 825,000 young people in the last 40 years for entrepreneurial, training and employment schemes; and with all my knowledge from my 6-week internship, \u2018CV\/Interview tip\u2019 guru lectures and one on one mentoring from Careers Ready, I\u2019m sure I\u2019d make the cut for His Royal Highness (The Princes Trust, 2016; Careers Ready, 2016).<\/p>\n

But hold on. Might it be better if I jumped across the pond? The USA doesn\u2019t seem to make the cut. They\u2019ve only got a couple of schemes available with overall investments only equating to around \u00a340 million when the British Government have invested more than that in just one of their schemes (United States Department of Labor, 2016; XE Currency Converter, 2016; House of Commons, 2016). Also, their population size means I\u2019d have so many more disadvantaged youths to compete with. Australia is even worse! Sure, they\u2019ve got this programme \u2019Work for the Dole\u2019 that gives me relevant skills and experience for six months of the year, including an income and the opportunity to expand my network (Australia\u2019s Department for Employment, 2016). But only 11.7% of their participants are in full-time work after that, which is 23.3% less than they predicted (The Guardian, 2016) \u2013 with my financial situation I just can\u2019t afford to waste time like that! The only other option I have really is Europe. Now they do pose a bit of a threat to the UK. Countries like Finland guarantee me employment with their compulsory conscription service providing me with income, housing, and the opportunity to expand my network for 167-347 days (The Finnish Defence Forces, 2016).<\/p>\n

Overall, I think I\u2019ll be OK. The UK has a lot on offer for me \u2013 more than some other Western countries so I should count myself lucky for that. And if it doesn\u2019t work out, going to Europe to improve my predicament shouldn\u2019t be too hard, let\u2019s just hope those EU negotiations still allow me to go over there, but that\u2019s a whole other rant for another time.<\/p>\n

Erika Mantoura studies BSc Business Management<\/u> at Southampton Business school. The views in this article are those of the author. This article is part of our \u2018Making Work Real\u2019 series. <\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Money. What a wonderful little thing, but that\u2019s only if you have it. \u2018What form of higher education are you going to go into to improve your employment prospects?\u2019 \u2018How are you going to support your family?\u2019 You see, I\u2019m part of that youth age group that have been screwed over by the 2008 financial crisis (Junankar, 2014) and I …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1030568],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-making-work-real","column","threecol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":949,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions\/949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}