What do young people want from the world of work? Tired tropes about “job-hoppers” in search of “meaning” are a distraction. Most youngsters want what their parents and grandparents wanted: a decent income, a chance to progress and enough security to build a life on. The trouble is, too few of them are getting it.
A decade of weak global growth bookended by economic disasters can bear much of the blame for high youth unemployment, slow wage growth and the number of graduates in non-graduate roles. There are also shifts in the nature of work.
The prevalence of gig platforms, unpaid internships, zero-hours, agency and temporary contracts can be overstated, since they remain a small share of total employment in most developed countries. But they are an important part of the labour market for young people. In the UK on the eve of the pandemic, one in ten 16 to 24-year-old workers were on zero-hours contracts, up from 6 per cent in 2013. In the eurozone, almost half of the under-25s were on temporary contracts.