Generations Apart: Finding Work

The ultimate baby boomer: but how will today's younger generation fare?

So far this month my head has been filled with all sorts of plans for self-improvement, not to mention preparing to get married this April. Thanks are due then to BBC Radio 4's recent Generations Apart programme for helping me get outside of my own head and helping me think about how we as a society can respond to the the challenges today's generation of young people are facing.

Finding Work

The episode of Generations Apart I happened to catch was looking at young people's experiences of finding work. Told through a series of personal stories, it contrasted the experiences and expectations of young people living in Britain today with the baby boomer generation which came of age in the 1960s. 

You can listen again to the episode by clicking here.

While you might expect any programme based around older people's recollections of their younger years to suffer from the whiff of nostalgia, I felt the programme succeeded in providing a balanced view of people's experience of work. By and large, the baby boomers described a world where work of one kind or another was plentiful for young people whilst the young people interviewed spoke of the intense competition to find work of any kind.

What Counts as Work?

Besides the drop in the total volume of work available to young people, the personal stories revealed how social attitudes and expectations around work had also changed significantly. For example, one retired journalist described how he and most of his fellow students were recruited to a paid trainee positions before they graduated. He described being recruited on the basis of his potential and with no expectation that he could do the job already. This world could hardly be further away from the one described by the modern day trainee journalist, competing for the opportunity to carry out unpaid work in the hope of one-day securing a scarce paid trainee post. 

Silver Linings

It's not all doom and gloom, however, and the programme equally powerfully highlighted the restrictions female baby boomers in particular experienced in their working lives. It's easy to forget how many workplaces operated a ban on married women, either formally or informally, and the consequences these policies continue to have on the economic security of today's generation of women approaching retirement . Again, Generations Apart's personal stories cut through the noise and to get to the heart of the issue.

No Future? No Thanks

While Generations Apart most definitely presented a sobering assessment of the life prospects for many of today's young people, I am determined not to adopt a pessimistic outlook. To do so would be to ignore the many great personal qualities that were evident in the stories the programme's young people told and to write off a generation.

Instead, what I took from the programme was a belief that it is possible to have a different society. Notwithstanding the clear social progress that has been made since the 1960s, it seems to me we've collectively lost our generosity and willingness to give young people a try. Certainly I know the expectations I place on young people joining organisations I work for are arguably higher than those that I could have fulfilled at their age.

Somehow we've got to create a more humane society, one that recognises the vital importance of giving all people the chance to make a positive contribution and be valued. Given the state of the economy and the long-term decline of 'jobs with prospects', I'm not sure whether the regular employment market will ever be able to offer today's generation of young people the same opportunities it offered the baby boomers. Whatever the mechanism, Generations Apart confirms to me we need to give people more not less grounds for optimism.