Generation hopeless: Millennials more likely to suffer long-term unemployment

IN MORE bad news for millennials, young Australians are more likely to face long-term unemployment than the rest of us. But it’s not their fault.

Young Australians are more likely to face long-term unemployment than the rest of us Is this the most millennial job in the world?

ALREADY sentenced to struggling to own a home and lumped with expensive university fees, Australia’s millennials are now becoming the unemployed generation.

A new report reveals the unemployment rate for 15 to 24-year-olds is more than double the overall figure, with one in five of those falling into the long-term unemployed category.

At September 2017, of the 267,000 unemployed people aged between 15 and 24 in Australia, 50,000 had been out of work for a year or more.

Released by the Brotherhood of St Laurence, the report Reality Bites: Australia’s Youth Unemployment In A Millennial Era, paints a grim and uncertain picture for millennial jobseekers.

The report points out that the unemployment rate for 15 to 24-year-olds in the labour force sits at 12.4 per cent — more than double the overall national unemployment rate of 5.5 per cent.

Like every young generation before, millennials are blamed for being lazy, unmotivated and self-centred, but the report argues: “Blaming young unemployed people for their predicament is simply not support by the facts.”

Long-term unemployed accounts for almost one-fifth of young jobseekers

Brotherhood of St Laurence executive director Tony Nicholson said politicians couldn’t be complacent about youth unemployment.

“Being long-term unemployed when a young person is making the key transition to independent adulthood poses a threat to their future economic and personal wellbeing. Yet, this is the reality many of our young people face, especially in disadvantaged suburbs and rural and remote regions,” Mr Nicholson said in a statement.

“More broadly, it worries me that our social security payments for our unemployed people — both the Youth Allowance and Newstart — are now so low that this is hindering unemployed people’s hunt for paid work, for example to be able to afford transport or appropriate clothes to attend job interviews.”

The most common reason for young people missing out on jobs was lack of experience

The report said it was essential that young people were “equipped with the networks and adaptive capabilities they need to take up new work opportunities, and provided with the knowledge they need to navigate the evolving labour market”.

It said: “Investment in economic development and job creation at local, state and federal levels is needed to create opportunities for young people now and in the future.”

Research by the Foundation for Young Australians released earlier this year said a 15-year-old today would likely have up to 17 jobs across five different industries over their lifetime.