With the reopening of shops, hospitality services and businesses following several coronavirus lockdowns, and in the run up to christmas, there seems to be a widespread notion that jobs are rife. We spoke to young people and their families in Butetown, Cardiff, and Pill, Newport, to get a sense of how they’re feeling about their futures. Images by SC Cook
Image: Luke and Hasan, not their real names, say racism is a major barrier to them getting a job
Pillgwenlly, Newport – known more commonly as Pill – wasn’t always like this, according to Claudette, a 37-year-old mother of two teenagers. There was a greater sense of community before, plenty of jobs and places for young people to go.
Her son has just come out of hospital, so she’s talking to us from her doorstep. “None of the funding ever gets spent in this area,” she tells us, gesturing to the surrounding area. “As you can see, it’s quite run down, and deprived.”
Her 17-year-old son, who is black, is standing on the front step with her. He tells us he wants to work, and that he’s looking for a job. Standing behind him, Claudette shakes her head cynically.
How do you feel about your son’s prospects? we ask her afterwards.
“Not very good at the moment,” she replies. “He’s just had a little episode with mental health, so he’s not feeling himself at the moment, due to everything being left – left school, no GCSEs, being dumped for a whole year, locked in his bedroom. It’s had a massive effect.”
Claudette’s son is not alone in this situation. Last year, the United Nations stressed that the pandemic could lead to a “lockdown generation” that “face permanent exclusion from the labour markets”. The Welsh Government also acknowledged that “young people in particular may carry the burden of dealing with coronavirus with them through their working lives”.
Image: Pill, Newport.
With young people heavily employed in non-food retail and hospitality, they suffered massive losses when the pandemic shut these sectors down. During the height of the pandemic, the claimant count for 18-24 year olds in Wales – which includes people who are either claiming Job Seeker’s Allowance or are required to search for work as a condition of receiving Universal Credit – more than doubled, increasing from 4.7% in March 2020 to 9.5% in July 2020. As of September 2021, the rate has decreased, but is still high at 6.1%.
Historically, financial crises, such as the 2008 recession, disproportionately impact society’s most vulnerable: the poor, the young, those with few educational qualifications, and black and minority ethnic individuals.
The stats are hard to navigate, and Wales doesn’t have figures for youth unemployment based on ethnicity, only on gender. It would be useful to have ethnicity statistics for youth unemployment, because there’s evidence of how race intersects with other demographics.
For example, we know that non-white ethnicity is linked with a greater likelihood of relative income poverty, and that generally, employment rates are lower among black, asian and minority ethnic individuals compared to their white counterparts.
The most recent youth unemployment rate in Wales stands at 12.0%, with the unemployment rate for men being higher than women at 13.2% and 10.8% respectively. It’s gradually improved since the pandemic, but, talking to individuals in Cardiff and Newport, it’s clear that the situation is far from positive.
“They want a certain image”
In Butetown, we spoke to Luke, 20, and Hasan, 19 – not their real names. They said unemployment is a huge issue for themselves and their friends and siblings, and that they felt their ethnicity also played a significant role in them getting a job, even if they make it through to the interview stage.
For Luke, having what he describes as “a biblical name” gets him interviews he says, but when he turns up he feels he’s treated differently when they see that he’s black.
“When I turn up there… they’re expecting someone that doesn’t look like me, and then, when I say I’m the guy, they’ll kind of look at me, like… okay, now that you’re here we have to give you the interview… but I’m going into that interview thinking I ain’t getting that job,” he says.
“Our style it’s not very embraced, like the way we look… I feel like it’s not accepted – like we look a certain way [and] they want a certain image.”
His friend Hasan nods in agreement.
For Hasan, it’s even harder, they point out, as having a Muslim name feels like a disadvantage when applying for jobs. He hasn’t had an interview yet, he tells us, whereas Luke has managed to get through to the interview stage a few times.
“His name is a little bit more of ‘our culture’,” explains Luke. “Whereas my name, being biblical it could be anyone, you could look like any type of person… I feel like I’ve got way more interviews than him just because my name is biblical.”
Image: Luke and Hasan, not their real names, say they’ve applied for hundreds of jobs yet haven’t got through the door
Luke also points out how gender, religion and ethnicity interacts when it comes to employment. For example, in the UK, the unemployment rate is lower for men from a minority ethnic background (8.3%) than for women (9.8%), and is highest for black women (13.1%).
“So if you’re an ethnic minority – full stop it’s gonna be hard – ethnic minority and different religion, you know, Muslim, it’s gonna be harder. If you’re a girl as well and you have all three, it’s much harder,” observes Luke. “Yeah. It’s sad – it’s how society is.”
Institutional racism is clearly present in every aspect of UK life: from schools and grade attainment rates to employment opportunities and wages. For example, not only are unemployment rates generally higher among ethnic minorities, but black and minority ethnic workers are also more likely to be on lower wages and less secure contracts.
According to Hasminder Kaur Aulakh, Policy Officer for the All Wales Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Engagement Programme run by Ethnic Minorities & Youth Support Team Wales (EYST): “there are clear hurdles preventing young BAME people finding employment.”
“A name on a CV that doesn’t sound Welsh, or living in a particular postcode, is reason enough for employers to dismiss applicants,” she tells voice.wales, pointing to a survey they are currently promoting around racism at work.
“Should an applicant be granted an interview,” she continues, “we then enter a situation where those who openly practice their religion and wear symbols of said religion are denied roles, being given meagre reasons for the rejection.”
“What’s the word for it? It’s very subtle racism,” observes Luke as we chat in Butetown. His friend Hasan nods in agreement. “Yeah. So like, because you’re not saying, ‘I’m not hiring black people’, or you’re not using certain words, I feel like you’re not racist, but it’s very subtle.”
When you say you’ve applied for “lots of jobs”, how many are we talking – 50, 100? we ask.
They both laugh and look at each other knowingly. “Way more – in a day. You get to the point where you’ve applied for this job already and you’re on Indeed… and then the system says ‘you’ve already applied’,” Luke tells us.
When we ask them what kind of jobs they’re applying for, they reel off a list of names, from big retailers – Marks and Spencers, Asda, Tesco – to restaurants, smaller stores, and businesses.
Both Luke and Hasan are in college studying a foundation course, but they’re skeptical about how far an education will take them in the current employment climate.
“Even then, my brother went and graduated, got a whole degree and everything, finished, [but] for a whole year and a bit he was applying for jobs. And he had a whole degree – it’s still hard for him to get a job,” says Hasan.
“It’s difficult for us to bear all the expenses”
Arriving in Newport, we meet two women in their early twenties who are standing on the pavement and appear to be searching for directions on their phones. One of them is called Arzoo, and she tells us that they’ve both come to Newport from Cardiff to look for jobs. Both from India originally, they tell us they’re Masters students looking for up to 20 hours of work a week.
“For now we are finding [the job search] difficult because we are new,” explains Arzoo. “We [don’t know] much about the area and the types of jobs, so right now we are finding it difficult.”
Like Hasan and Luke, they’ve also been applying for different types of jobs, some related to their degree field, but others mainly in hospitality. While Arzoo managed to get an interview at McDonald’s recently, she said the interview was competitive and she lost out to people with more experience.
Image: The community centre in Pill, Newport and youth services in the city. Neither have been open since the pandemic began.
After speaking to Arzoo and Claudette in Newport, we decide to take a look at what help is available for young people seeking work. The “Pill Mill” – Pill’s community centre – is a stone’s throw away from where Claudette lives, but she says her son and other young people don’t get to use it much anymore.
We try to go inside, but someone comes to meet us at the door after we ring the bell. The centre, he says, is no longer available for drop ins.
Throughout Wales, many public services are operating at a limited capacity due to the pandemic, which itself came on the back of ten years of austerity cuts.
There is a sense, however, that underfunded services are retreating further from the public with Covid and may never come back.
Walking through Newport city centre, we called into the public library. Seeing a sign for a youth support team inside, we climbed the stairs hoping to get more information, but the doors to the office were locked with no further information provided. Ringing the buzzer two times provoked no response.
In the main library, we asked at the desk about the service, and found out that each of Newport’s four ‘neighbourhoods’ now had their own youth employment support service, but due to the pandemic, and recent changes to the team, staff members hinted that it was complicated by fractured funding from different pools.
We also noticed some computers in the library. A couple were occupied, but many were turned to face the wall. We asked about this and found out that only three computers are now available due to covid-19 restrictions, whereas previously there were sixteen. Access to free resources such as the internet is clearly essential for the poorest people when it comes to searching and applying for work, yet it has been severely restricted.
This was a point raised by Hasminder Kaur Aulakh at EYST Wales, who said that discrimination and racism “Coupled with technology poverty and the rise of online interviews and remote working” means it’s unsurprising that “our young BAME people are finding it impossible to be granted employment. It’s not a case of them not wanting to work, they are being actively kept out of the workforce by systemic discrimination and institutional racism.”
“There’s no opportunity for these children”
Claudette is more pessimistic than her son is regarding his future. This is because she’s comparing Pill to what it was like when she was younger, where jobs were a lot easier to come by and there was a far stronger sense of community, with more support available for young people.
Recently, youth leaders called for the recruitment of “an additional 50,000 youth workers and volunteers to meet a tripling in levels of need during the pandemic” suggesting that youth services across Wales and England, particularly in the most deprived regions, risk being “decimated.”
Claudette hints that it’s easy for kids to fall into crime, gangs or unemployment when there’s nothing to keep them occupied or offer them support.
This is a point raised by youth leaders, who say a lack of access to youth services leaves young people increasingly vulnerable to organised crime gangs, in particular county lines drug dealing operations.
They also highlight the blow to their self-esteem and self-confidence as a result of reduced interaction with other people during lockdown.
“It’s not just employment – leading up to it there’s nothing – there’s no opportunity for these children around here at all… literally, there’s nothing,” Claudette says adamantly.
In Butetown, Cardiff, a similar sentiment is echoed by Luke and Hasan.
“People give up,” Luke tells us when we ask him about his friends and family. “They give up and then you’re not surprised… they’re like, why even bother no more?”
But he also points out that this can have the opposite effect on people – making young people – especially those from black, asian and minority ethnic communities who already have to work harder than their white counterparts to prove themselves – want to work even harder: “… at the same time, that’s why some people, they just feel like they need to go school because if they don’t go to school, they ain’t gonna get a job.”
There are misconceptions from older generations that young people are lazy and less hard working than they once were. However, the young people we talk to are keen to work, they’re passionate, smart and enthusiastic, but they face huge challenges even just to earn the opportunity to prove this.
It’s difficult to know what lies ahead for young people in Wales and the UK. The people we spoke to didn’t paint a picture of an easy labour market where yo ucan just walk into any job.
While furlough schemes offered a safety net for many during the pandemic, Trade Union Congress (TUC) Wales told voice.wales “[that] the question is what happens now that support has been pulled back and if the recovery is mismanaged – as ever, young people find themselves disproportionately in the most vulnerable industries and roles.”
The impacts of the pandemic on young people’s education, self-esteem and mental health is clear, but to say that this alone is the cause of their struggle would be to deny the role of years of austerity and cuts to youth services, a lack of investment into young lives and the most deprived areas, and the reality of institutional racism, which seeps into every aspect of society.
“I’ve got my own dreams and aspirations,” Hasan says. “I have many things I want to achieve, and [I want to] help people around me.”
“Even situations like this. I feel like a lot of us don’t wanna work for no one – just because you see how you’re treated,” says Luke. “I feel like a lot of us want to get jobs, so we can then provide for them…”
Hasan cuts in: “provide for them – yeah – everyone else who’s in our situation,” then Luke finishes the sentence: “kind of show them that like, you can do it.”
