Getting old is not for the faint-hearted, as the saying goes. But watching Rachel Reeves’ Budget last week made me almost glad to be past the first flush of youth.
For it is the young who will pay for the mistakes being made by the Government now – and, in fairness, by its predecessors.
The increase in unemployment, which rose to 5 per cent in the third quarter of this year, is concentrated among young people.
The jobless rate among 16 to 24-year-olds is a shocking 15.3 per cent, and there are almost a million NEETs – young people not in education, employment or training.
Opportunities in areas that once offered a first foothold – retail and hospitality among them – are shrinking due to rising costs faced by employers.
The Budget did include measures such as fully-funded apprenticeships for small and medium-sized firms, but this will not be enough to turn the tide.
Bleak future: It is the young who will pay for the mistakes being made by Governments
Although well intentioned, an inflation-busting increase in the minimum wage, coupled with the workers’ rights Bill and previous National Insurance rises, threaten to price young people out of the employment market.
The cost of hiring young workers between the ages of 18 and 20 has risen by £4,000 in two years, according to the Centre for Policy Studies.
The existence of nearly a million NEETs is a scandal and a tragedy. Unemployment early on can cast a long shadow over youthful lives.
Even youngsters high up the social and educational scale, who would normally encounter few obstacles, are finding life difficult. As Claer Barrett, a brilliant observer of monetary matters, pointed out in the Financial Times, it was a horrid Budget for the Henrys, or 21st century yuppies – young professionals who are High Earners but Not Rich Yet.
Cry the tiniest of tears, perhaps, but countless Henrys and Henriettas are being dragged into higher-rate bands by the freeze on thresholds, with some ending up on truly punitive marginal rates of more than 60 per cent.
The graduates aiming for professions such as law and accountancy face being elbowed aside by AI because it can do much of the grunt work that used to be handed to trainees, such as the audit ticking I endured as a fledgling in a Big Four firm.
Rachel Reeves increased spending on welfare while hitting workers and savers. No doubt she is sincere in wanting to give children better chances and alleviate child poverty.
But the message being sent encourages people to think work is for mugs when you can live on benefits. This does the younger generation no favours and risks trapping them in lives that are impoverished culturally, socially and financially.
Perhaps the biggest disservice being done to the young is saddling them with a crippling burden of debt.
It is not all Labour’s fault – one cannot blame the party for Covid or Vladimir Putin – but this Government looks set on making a bad situation worse.
Reeves claims she will meet her fiscal rules by the end of this Parliament, which may prove as fantastical as the notion she will still be Chancellor by then.
The costs of an ageing population threaten to submerge the country under an ocean of debt within the lifetimes of today’s 20-somethings.
Under current policy, the debt-to-GDP ratio will exceed 270 per cent by the early 2070s, according to the OBR.
Politicians of all stripes know the country is living beyond its means but dare not say so aloud.
Who will be left to pay? The young.
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