If you believe the newspapers (a.k.a. if you’re blissfully naive) you will now think that the recession is over. Earlier this month The Guardian told us that B2B spending had increased and that after a year of doom and gloom global finances were starting to look upwards. Hoorah! Party Time? Well yes, if you are a corporate fat cat or even just generally employed you can finally start to relax in knowledge that there are brighter days ahead.
To coincide with the release of our Tech Tribe report we got in touch with some of our Headboxers to give us an insight in to their lives during the recession. The first topic we approached them about was job hunting during the recession, has it been as bad as everyone makes it out to be? Or is it still a fruitful market for the young professional?
Here is what the Headboxers had to say:
“A few months ago i was trying to ignore the recession, i thought that it was still in firms best interests to hire graduates because in a year or two things hopefully will be looking a bit better and i didnt think
If I was asked to summarize how youth feel about their economic future in a quote by a Former U.S President, it would go a little something like this:
‘The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time’
Abraham Lincoln
Relevance? Read on…
As we established in our last blog entry (It’s a matter of life and debt…) debt amongst youth is at an all time high (or is that low?). If you are inclined to believe the media the reason for the red is the environment we have grown up in, a world where being significantly in debt is accepted as the norm. Yes, this is a good point and was very relevant a couple of years ago, however Tech Tribe tells us that this attitude is beginning to change, 60% of our Tech Tribe respondents disagree that “debt is fine because everyone else is in it too”.
We are going to kick off Youth Lab by sharing some of the research we have been doing on the all encompassing topic of… the recession. It seems on the surface the general thinking is that just because people are in full time education they won’t be affected by the current economic crisis. I mean students are protected right? They have doting parents, living at home, or in halls, and you can’t exactly get made redundant from school or uni can you? It is an easy assumption to make that the safety net of full time education saves you from ‘real life’ problems however Face’s recent Tech Tribe research results say something different.
We are going to discuss loads of recession topics over the next few months, but before we do, let’s put a stake in the ground and take a look at the current financial situation.
When you’re young, there may not be the responsibility of having a mortgage, 2 cars, 4 kids and a dog, but that does not stop you from getting in to some serious debt. Tech Tribe reports that a staggering 48% of 19-25 year olds have over £20,000 in personal debt.
