The Lost Generation

You hear it everywhere you go nowadays; recession, recession recession. Economic apocalypse! Dismay, despair! The squandering of decades of growth! They are already calling us "The Lost Generation"; the bright-eyed, ambitious kids fresh from their graduation ceremonies, red cardboard tubes barely out their hands... and already on Jobseeker's Allowance with no hope of that glowing career they were promised in their impressionable youth. End of the road? Time to emigrate? Maybe.

There's a lot of anger out there among the expanding unemployed graduate population as competition rockets and opportunities remain beyond the reach of the average young person. Employers have a greater pool of candidates to choose from, and as a consequence the demand for higher levels of experience is growing. And just who has the required experience, you may ask? First - those who have been working for years and have recently lost their jobs. Perhaps not a huge percentage (unemployment stands at 7.8% in the UK at the moment, but considering it was 5.5% at the beginning of 2007 the increase has significantly affected the job market); second, those who are fortunate enough to be able to fund themselves through periods of internships and work experience where you can be expected to be paid very little, for months or even years.

A skewed and unjust trend. What about all the others, with perfectly good degrees and a desire to work but being of a more tender age or humble beginning? Aren't these the inequalities our Labour government strive to stamp out, not exacerabate?

But there is the third option of candidate. Oh yes! They are the wily underdogs of the job market, the cheeky charming coyotes who started from the dusty bottom of the employment ladder and defiantly hauled themselves up. This is the person I aspire to be - the one who made their own way, fought for their place in the world and proved their right to it. To quote some cheesy BritPop (courtesy of The Feeling) - "it's better that you come from nothing, than nothing comes from you." Just because the world isn't on your side, doesn't mean you can't change its mind.

I'm getting stuck in, folks, like a woolly mammoth in a tar pit. And I recommend my fellow "Lost" peers do the same - get your ninja faces on guys, because you're not lost; just temporarily misplaced down the back of a banker's couch.