Young people are skint. But we can’t blame the baby boomers for ever
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Version 0 of 1. For those in need of further proof that the younger generation is being royally shafted from all sides, you need look no further than today’s Institute of Fiscal Studies report, which outlines just how badly the wages of young adults have been affected by years of either recession or austerity. The results are demoralising, to say the least. While a wage squeeze has led to a drop in living standards across the board, with British workers taking home less in real terms than they did in 2001, it is the young who have recovered least successfully. Not only did the earnings of 22- to 29-year-olds fall by 10.6% between 2009 and 2011, compared with just under 7% for older age groups, but, by 2014, wages for the over-60s recovered to pre-crisis levels. Meanwhile, wages remained 9% lower than in 2008 for those aged 22 to 29. It’s a strange business, spending almost a decade being told that you’re a lost generation, while simultaneously working yourself into the ground for a measly pay packet. Above all, it is exhausting, trying to work out a way around the road-blocks that you encounter at every turn. It’s no wonder young people’s anxiety levels are through the roof, most notably amongst the young unemployed (33% of whom say they are “falling apart” emotionally on a regular basis). For many struggling young people, beneath the surface there are all-too-frequent murmurings of fear, and the seeds of a potential contingency plan: an extra part-time job, a worse house, moving back in with the parents or abroad, or out of the big cities where you’ll face a pay cut or a smaller recruitment pool but fewer panic attacks on the Tube. “Let’s live off vegetables for the week,” you think, brightly, but then it gets to Friday and all you want is a chicken and mushroom pie, some fatty, creamy warmth in your belly. “I know! I’ll sell all my clothes on eBay”, you think, but no one wants your stretchy Primark cast-offs. You’ll do anything to keep your head above water: share a room, or “hutch up” in a cupboard or mezzanine, take that zero-hours or temporary contract because, although you wake up sweating in the night because you’re one missed call away from not paying the rent, it’s something, and scraps are always better than nothing. Then there are the freelancers, excluded from the report. I know so many people who are attempting to rely on unstable, patchwork careers, most notably by tutoring the children of the oligarchs currently buying up swathes of London real estate through their prep-school entrance exams. They spend their afternoons and evenings in the luxurious surroundings of the super-rich, and their nighttimes in cold, damp, shitholes that are overcrowded and overpriced, or sometimes both, getting drunk and stoned to try and forget for a few hours. In the middle of all this, there’s the “affordable” housing crisis. Because how can anyone on such poor pay and such high rent save for a deposit on a house? At the beginning of the crisis, it was easy to blame the baby boomers. I’ve heard the rants a thousand times, in the pub and in the kitchen at parties: “I hate them,” “they had it so good.” And yes, today’s story of the single but divorced adults building gigantic detached homes for themselves does leave a funny, sour taste in the mouth, but talk to most members of our parents’ generation and they feel as worried as we do. We are, after all, their children, and many of them have stepped in try to create a better life for their children where the government has failed to do so. A report earlier this month found that nearly four in five young adults aged 18 to 30 received financial assistance from their parents – nearly £30bn worth. The most common financial help from parents was for a house deposit, on average amounting to £13,281 per family. It would be hard not to feel grateful to the boomers for this assistance. Even though I wonder where these people get the money from, I know that my own parents and many others would do the same if they could. For my generation, a life of security and stability is the holy grail, but the only way we’ll get it is if we take a minute to truly stare at our paycheques and allow ourselves to stop contingency planning for a moment and get angry, to channel that anger and that disappointment and that bitterness into political action. Instead of staying furious at the generation who vote, and have always voted, and so broadly got what they want, we need to take to the polling booths, stop relying on our parents to save us, and try and save ourselves. Nothing else, not even thirteen extra grand for the lucky ones, will do. |