Roberts, Steven D. (2012) No snakes, but no ladders: Young people, employment, and the low skills trap at the bottom of the contemporary service economy. Project report. Resolution Foundation, London (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:39059)
The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided. |
Abstract
In recent years, research and policy activity has primarily been concerned with the numbers, experiences
and trajectories of apprentices and university students, or with the lives of ‘spectacular’, more obviously
economically marginalised groups of young people who are entrenched in issues of social exclusion and
deprivation. Many young people with level two and level three qualifications, however, directly enter the
labour market. This sizeable but unspectacular group remains overlooked by policymakers as well as
researchers. These young people undertake new forms of employment in an increasingly polarized job
market, rely on on-the-job training rather than higher education to enhance their human capital and
compete more and more with graduates who cannot find jobs to match their own newly acquired high
skill levels.
The net result is that this middling group ends up becoming trapped, with limited chances of progression,
for example in the retail sector where 31 percent of employees are aged 16 to 24. The ongoing policy
focus on level 2 qualifications does not serve these young people well. Policy-makers use qualification
levels as a proxy for skills, but disregard the negative returns and by extension the lack of genuine
progression as a result of obtaining such qualifications. Achieving a qualification – any qualification – it
seems has become a proxy measure of successful outcomes over and above what people actually do in
their jobs, what they are actually paid, what they can afford, or whether they have genuinely improved
their capacity to be more productive. Greater employee engagement in company training and
development programmes can better align business needs with individual needs for progression. At the
policy level, skills policy needs to place greater emphasis on whether achieving a qualification enables
employees to perform better and progress.
Item Type: | Reports and Papers (Project report) |
---|---|
Uncontrolled keywords: | Youth; Employment; Policy; Career development; Economics |
Subjects: | H Social Sciences |
Divisions: | Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research |
Depositing User: | Mita Mondal |
Date Deposited: | 07 Apr 2014 12:30 UTC |
Last Modified: | 16 Nov 2021 10:15 UTC |
Resource URI: | https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/39059 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes) |
- Export to:
- RefWorks
- EPrints3 XML
- BibTeX
- CSV
- Depositors only (login required):