From university to universal credit: Why life for graduates like me can be grim – Emilija Morrison
Emilija Morrison explains what it’s like to be young in modern Britain, where hundreds of thousands of graduates are claiming universal credit
After graduating from university last year, the only job I could get was at a chocolate shop. Rather than doing anything relevant to my history degree, I spent day in and day out making hot chocolates. I’d hoped to be a serious journalist reporting on serious things. Instead, here I was, very much the opposite of serious, chasing a tourist who had forgotten his gingerbread marshmallow down Victoria Street.
I was far from the only graduate at the chocolate shop. There were lots of us. One guy had a master’s degree and had been there a year. Others had graduated the same year as me in subjects ranging from computer science to psychology. Our fancy degrees had been swapped with learning how to add whipped cream and sprinkles to various chocolate drinks.
Across the UK, there are thousands of cafes like ours, all filled with recent graduates. That’s if you’re lucky to get a job at all. Indeed, the figures are stark for our generation: nearly a million people between the ages of 16 and 24 are unemployed. And this figure fails to show those just a bit older than that, those who took gap years and further qualifications and did not graduate at 22. Sadly, some new schemes aimed at helping the youth have a cut-off age – it is important that all young people get help.
Young lives on hold
The UK has Europe’s third-highest youth unemployment rate. Many of us, unsurprisingly, are living at home: 40 per cent of 25-year-olds. This figure is especially worrying. How are we supposed to have an independent adult life, settle down, have kids, if we’re still stuck at home?
With so many of us living with family, it means we’re surely going to have children later than previous generations. That’s if we can afford it… a bit hard to even consider if you are still a 20-something kid being bossed by your parents to do the dishes.
Young people across the world are in a similar boat. Friends in Sweden, Italy and India have spent the last year either unemployed or underemployed. In China, they’ve apparently even set up fake offices so that unemployed youths can go in and feel like they have a job.
Of the graduates I know, the ones who had supermarket jobs while at university seem to be in the most stable place. One friend, who graduated in computer science, continued with the supermarket job she had throughout university.
While at school, she’d been told by career advisors to study computer science. It was the future; it was the ticket to a high-paying job in tech. Yet in the time it took to get her degree, the world for computer science graduates flipped on its head: due to AI, it is now especially difficult to land a job in that field.
Quite the downfall
Family members often don’t understand. I tried bringing up the conversation with my Scottish grandmother the other day. After university, she pretty much walked into a job. My Lithuanian side of the family don’t understand either; my Lithuanian grandmother had a job assigned to her after university, growing up as she did in the Soviet Union. She studied maths and spent her entire career in her field.
When you hear that sort of story, you think perhaps we should do something similar for university students here. We need 200 teachers? Then train exactly 200, meaning that teachers won’t end up stuck on never-ending temporary contracts. University, of course, isn’t the only option: we need an emphasis on apprenticeships and training for jobs that do need people.
Many of us have had to turn to universal credit. From university to universal credit – quite the spectacular downfall. In January, more than 700,000 graduates were claiming UC. Having been on it, the system is dehumanising – I was sanctioned for forgetting to apply for a job at a restaurant.
I’d applied for jobs everywhere, yet because I hadn’t applied for one job – that I had not been told was mandatory – I wouldn’t be getting anything for a quarter of a year. I highly doubt I’m the only graduate who has been sanctioned for something so silly.
Another option some of my friends have turned to is market research. While many of the tasks aren’t too bad, others are less so.
Recently, I came across one where they were testing new period products and needed people to take pictures of their used pads every time they went to the bathroom. I declined, yet I’m sure some cash-strapped young people will have accepted. What kind of world are we living in, if young people are having to resort to taking pictures of bloody pads to make a bit of money?
Looking to the future
I am now the youth representative for Scotland 2050, a conference looking at what the country will be like in that year. When things are especially grim now, it makes us wonder what the future has in store.
Clearly, we’re all going to reach certain milestones later than other generations. But with the way everything is rapidly changing in the time of AI, it’s hard to know for sure what life will look like in 2030, let alone 2050.
Many of the jobs we will have may not exist yet. Despite the gloom surrounding our generation, however, we do need to remain optimistic. Things might be going a little slower for us right now, but they’re still going.
We may need to adapt; we may need to realise our lives might look a little different to those of previous generations – but we will get there. One job application at a time.
Emilija Morrison is strategy, content and youth co-ordinator for the Scotland 2050 conference
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