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Young people “not Vicky Pollards?

A North East professor has warned against writing off young unemployed people as lazy ‘Vicky Pollards’.

Rob MacDonald, professor of sociology at Teesside University, told MPs that jobless young people are victims of manufacturing decline, not a generation “unwilling to work”.

In the North East, the number of 16 to 24-year-old ‘Neets’ (people not in employment, education or training) has risen from 16.4% in late 2007 (52,000) to 22.7% (74,000) at the end of 2009, the highest proportion anywhere in England.

They have been dubbed the ‘Vicky Pollard generation’, after the character in BBC comedy show Little Britain.

Speaking to an inquiry by the children’s select committee, Professor Macdonald insisted young people badly wanted to work.

He agreed they typically left school early, with few qualifications, but argued that was because they were keen to follow their parents into steady jobs - rather than go to college.

However, whereas Teesside had enjoyed an unemployment rate of just 1.5 per cent in the 1960s, those reliable jobs in the steel and chemicals industries had now disappeared.

Professor Macdonald said: “They described a period of churning between jobs, training schemes, courses and unemployment - a no pay, low pay cycle that’s their experience into their 30s.

“It is economic marginality in an insecure labour market, churning through various options but never making progress forwards.”

Professor Macdonald’s research, called ‘Disconnected Youth?’, carried out interviews with nearly 200 working-class young people in Teesside, following many of them into their 30s.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .