Everyone is massively inconvenienced and distressed by the impact of the coronavirus. The consequences for our health workers and other essential workers have been immense. I hope that as we go forward we will ensure they are properly valued, supported and paid.
But I am also very worried about the prospects for our young adults. And not just because of the mental health challenges they are facing.
Those people leaving school to seek work this summer, and those finishing at college and university, are facing the most severe challenges of any generation since the Second World War.
After the recession a decade ago, it took eight years for the generation then entering the labour market to get to somewhere near where they would have been without the recession.
In earlier recessions, some of the school leavers became permanently disadvantaged in the labour market – unable to ever obtain good jobs that were well paid. There is more than enough proof of that in Derry today amongst people who are no longer young. Entering the labour market during a recession is likely to permanently damage an individual’s pay.
There is no simple solution to this, but the best advice to those young adults looking to enter the labour market today is – don’t. Instead, they should seek new training and education courses, which build their skills while also delaying entry into the weakest labour market in living memory. Possibly worse even than during the terrible days of the Troubles.
So we need the Northern Ireland Executive and the Department for the Economy to recognise the need for more training facilities for young adults. They need to work closely with our colleges, universities and schools to provide additional opportunities and facilities for young adults to strengthen their skills base, giving them a better chance of a good job at the end of this crisis.
And this should include apprenticeships. Too often in Northern Ireland, we focus on degrees and academic ambitions, overlooking the desperate need for better vocational skills. Northern Ireland’s large businesses are required to pay into the UK-wide Apprenticeship Levy, yet Northern Ireland does not get its fair share of spending on apprenticeships. This has to be a priority for government here immediately as we seek to improve our skills base.
Apprenticeships provide an opportunity for young adults – and older workers – to earn while they learn. This opportunity must be grasped.
The Covid-19 crisis has been a time for us all to reflect on what we value. One of the few benefits of the crisis has been the reduction in environmental damage caused by modern society. That, in turn, underlines the importance of one of the SDLP’s core policy priorities – the Green New Deal.
We want the Green New Deal as an investment into our society and our homes to make them more environmentally efficient, reducing the cost as well as the harm from heating buildings. We have the opportunity today to use this crisis to create training p