An uncertain future for today’s young jobseekers | Letters

Readers respond to an article about the obstacles young people face in the search for jobs The issue of youth unemployment is not a new one (Young, ambitious and out of work: ‘I’ve gone from Oxford to zero jobs. It’s a bit of a fall’, 11 June). When my husband and I graduated from university in 1980, it took him 18 months to find employment, not in his field of microbiology but as a trainee IT programmer. We were lucky, and that led to a successful long-term career where I had the option of staying at home with the children. This generation is stuck with fewer opportunities and the need for at least two incomes to create the chance to build a life and a future. I know that grinding sense of despair with each rejection or, worse, the ghosting of an application. My youngest has been through this. He has a science degree, biased towards engineering, and after hundreds of rejections he was lucky that someone saw something in him and employed him as an accounting trainee. He loves his job, but knows how lucky he is that he can still live at home. Tony Blair’s concept of degrees for all is an abject failure, leaving debt and despair in its wake, and the rise in pension age is a