Youth unemployment has reached crisis point in Australia, the Brotherhood of St Lawrence says, as it releases an analysis of the latest official figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The number of young Australians out of work has reached ''crisis point'', as more 15 to 24-year-olds struggle to find jobs in the ripples of the global financial crisis.
The Age: Youth unemployment reaches crisis point says Brotherhood of St Laurence
An average of 12.4 per cent of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 were out of work in the year to January. Executive director Tony Nicholson has described the result as a disaster. "And in our modern economy that means that they're really being sentenced to a lifetime of poverty."
He has called on the Federal Government to invest in a national strategy to turn things around. The national strategy should be to turn our economy around, and end the "growth" model.
Youth unemployment at Crisis Point
There's a lot of intellectual dishonesty, and while agencies are sweeping up the mess of human fallouts and poverty, and welfare dependency, governments still continue with their "growth" agendas! Instead of trying to "grow" out of the mess, and make the hole deeper, they should be making the logical U-turn from economic growth, to stability.
While youth especially are facing high unemployment, there's nothing being done to mitigate the myth of "skill shortages" in Australia! With over 1000 new arrivals each day in Australia, at airports, the competition for jobs keeps getting harder. Our economy can only "grow" to a natural height, determined by natural resources and prices, and forcing higher population growth ignores the costs of growth.
A leading migrant and refugee settlement agency AMES Chief Executive Officer Cath Scarth has told a conference at the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA) 2013 Conference on the Gold Coast, that effective unemployment rate among some communities from non-English speaking backgrounds in Australia could be as high as 20 per cent.
ProBono Australia: migrant unemployment higher than reported
Over the past fifteen years, hundreds of thousands of sponsored workers have come to Australia, with just under half opting to take out permanent residence. Unemployment among skilled migrants and their families is 30% higher than for the population as a whole, but those who do have a job are more likely to be in a professional role.
Approximately one quarter (26.1 per cent) of Australia’s total population were born overseas and a comprehensive survey last of recent migrant labour force data showed that recent migrants have significantly higher unemployment rates.
The Brotherhood of St Lawrence and other do-good agencies trying to be a voice for Australians who are unemployed should end their obstruction of the real facts. Our population growth, driven by record levels of "skilled" migration and family reunions, is at a runaway rate and can't be justified. It is out-pacing jobs creation, and housing and infrastructure building is only a short-term fix, and adds to the misanthropic "growth" agendas of governments.
Comments
Anonymous (not verified)
Tue, 2014-02-25 12:26
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What's growing is youth unemployment queues
Like the cliché of the "ageing population", the "global financial crisis" is being used to blame the shortage of jobs. It's really the fact that our artificially driven population growth is faster than jobs creation, and the global economy is causing industries to leak out of our country.
The auto industries are going, and so are Qantas jobs.
In northern areas of Victoria, in the regional towns, there is 17 per cent youth unemployment; in some of the north and west areas of metropolitan Melbourne, we've got unemployment levels amongst our young people of 16 and 17 per cent.
Our politicians are speaking about "growth", but what's really growing is the national rate of youth unemployment which in 2008 was 8.8 per cent; now we're topping 12 per cent. And that's going to continue unless we have a national strategy to take away. Contrary to the "ageing population" being an economic burden on the welfare system, it's really the swelling number of young people in economic overshoot, bereft of opportunities and training.
Our economy is hollow, and based on population growth rather than real economic growth. It's like a leaking bucket - it's being filled in one end by a flow of new-comers, immigrants supposedly to fill in skills shortages, but leaking out the bottom with people overflowing into welfare queues, and skills, in redundancy.
PostGrowthEra
Thu, 2014-02-27 09:50
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Spain's lost youth: This could happen here.
In Spain, nearly half of those under 30 - almost 2 million people - cannot find a job. Suicide rates are up and the young fear they have no future in their own country.
The Age: The Lost generation of Spain's unemployed youth
Spain is in population overshoot, over their economic needs. Rather than the feared "ageing population", they are facing an overwhelming number of disenchanted and lost young people.
The irony is that Spain went from receiving far more immigrants in search of "a better life" - 600,000 in 2006 alone - than there were emigrant Spaniards leaving Spain for the same reason. Migrating to a "better life" is a retro dream, one that almost doesn't exist now. The desire to live in Europe, the USA or Australia is being loved to death, and destroyed by population growth!
Spain's young professionals are fleeing the country and Oxfam has predicted that 18 million Spaniards - a staggering 40 per cent of the population - are at risk of social marginalisation within the next decade.
For more than a decade, about a quarter of Spain's economic output revolved around tourism and construction, two industries highly susceptible to downturns in the international economy. There is a stark similarity with Australia's economy - based on property development, service industries and tourism. They are non-productive in tangible outputs, and industries that are first to fail with an economic downturn.
There are plenty of young people - people with a university education - who have simply given up hope. While the cliché of our "ageing population" threat is being used to justify "growth" and more immigration, the real problem now is the number, and cost, of supporting a swelling number of young people with little future!
Immigrants from Africa are adding to their woes. Guardia Civil sources have said that approximately 100 sub-Saharan immigrants have managed to jump the fence complex separating the Spanish exclave of Melilla from Moroccan territory. They said about 500 people had attempted to force their way across the border in the early hours of Monday morning. Some 150 illegal immigrants forced their way across the fence at Melilla, which is protected by razor-wire, earlier in the week.
Spain has called on Europe to help them to stem the rate of immigration into Spain.
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