These studies highlight how dispossessed young people are losing out.
Photo: Rob Milsom/Flickr
Researchers have some new stats that back-up what you probably already think about how hard it is to get a job if you don’t have the right experience - and about how many young people are sleeping rough.
Gail Pacheo, who heads AUT’s future of work programme, has been investigating how digital disruption affects workers.
If people didn’t get relevant work experience when they were young it was very hard for them to catch up, she said.
"They're lacking experience, and we hear employers constantly say that when they're looking at hiring people they'd much rather hire someone with experience. So they're more likely to lose out on jobs."
More than 80,000 people aged 15 to 24 are out of work and not in education or training.
Professor Paul Spoonley, a demographer from Massey University, is also concerned.
"If they're not coming out education and going in to something then we're losing them. And they're going to be a problem long term," he said.
Minister of Business, Employment and Innovation Steven Joyce accepts this is an area that needs to be focused on by the Government. He said there were a number of programmes already in place, such as Māori and Pasifika trades training initiatives involving families and churches in helping young people through the education system or a return to work.
Of course, if you can’t get a job then it’s hard to pay rent.
Another study, this one by University of Otago and involving more than 110 social services, youth and housing organisations, found 13 percent of young people are couch surfing, 9 percent were sleeping rough and 5 percent were sleeping in a vehicle.
The survey reported there are few suitable places for young people to live, particularly for those moving out of Child, Youth and Family care, and that undermined their opportunities to study and work.
However, the Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett, who commissioned the research, said she believed the situation is improving.
"We have set up the supported youth housing and when I was Minister of Social Development that was also around those that were teen parents and set up homes for them with a whole lot of wrap around support."
Bennett said she has visited some of those places and they seemed to be working well.
But Anni Watkin, general manager of Youth Cultural Development in Christchurch, said it was still near impossible for young people to rent decent accommodation, and there were many more homeless young people the government authorities knew nothing about.
"Because there is a shortfall in housing we find that landlord, private landlords especially, will lean toward people who have a history of being good tenants, and families before they'll even consider young people."
Watkin said most of the young people who could not find homes lived from day to day, couch surfing or sleeping rough.
"We're finding some young people are accepting really unsavoury accommodation with people who can't be trusted."
She said some young people resorted to prostitution or stealing to pay their board, while others tended to end up in prison.
Labour Party housing spokesperson Phil Twyford, who obtained the survey under the Official Information Act, said it should be a wake-up call for the government.
"It's quite shocking that there are so many young people who are amongst the 34,000-odd people that Otago University believes are homeless in New Zealand today."
Meanwhile, the government introduced legislation to Parliament on Wednesday which will allow vulnerable young people to remain in state care until they are at least 18.
They will also have the option of remaining fully in state care until they are 21 or at least be eligible for some support services up to the age of 25.
Currently they lose all support the day they turn 17.
Information for this story sourced from rnz.co.nz.
Image on Flickr.
