What does the future hold for the young?

There is growing evidence that young people are suffering more than any other group in the face of the current austerity policies of the government.

If those young people live in south Wales, the old industrial areas of the north of England or any of our most neglected sea side towns, then they are likely to face even greater difficulties. With the government determined to shrink the state to levels not seen since the 1920s, it is inevitable that young people will only see their circumstances worsen and their prospects become even bleaker.

There are significant cuts in real terms about to hit our educations sector. We already spend less on research and development , as a proportion of our national income, than our biggest competitor nations, as well as most of our fellow EU members.

For those who emerge from college or university, the jobs market is distinguished by its precariousness. Getting a stable and well paid job, which can lead to what we all used to call a “career”, is no more than a pipe dream for huge numbers of today’s young people. And there is no hope at all that any of this is going to change for the next five years at least, with some economists predicting no end to austerity for some time even beyond that point.

The consequences of all this for young adults who have no assets – property, shares, investments – are awful.

They have no way of protecting themselves from the economic storm into which we have thrust them, and we don’t even bother to give them any decent training so they are at least better prepared when they step out of school or leave college.

We devised Keep the Cash! in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the global financial markets, the bail out of the banks and the start of the credit crunch, back in 2009/10.

We then thought that things were looking desperate, but we never believed that they would actually get worse, to the point at which the notion of secure, well paid employment would be eroded by zero hours contracts, part time working, “self-employment” and all the other appalling changes in the jobs market, which have now become the norm.

What we must not do, is to accept these changes as permanent, and we need to focus our efforts, through programmes like Keep the Cash!, on giving young people the tools they need to survive in our less certain economy. If we dont do that, the future prospects for millions of young people will be even more depressing and heartbreaking.