“The lazy youth of today?” – Learning to understand young people better

One prejudice persists: young people who have no training are simply “lazy and spoiled”.
Why is this too short-sighted?
Hubertus Heil criticized the “contempt for young people” at the Skilled Workers Congress of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.
And we at JOBLINGE know from our daily work that there is much more to it than that.
The facts are as follows: there are 1.7 million vacancies and 1.6 million young people without initial vocational training.
At first glance, does that sound like a simple solution?
Unfortunately, the situation is more complex: around 630,000 so-called NEETs (young people who are not currently working, in training or at school) are systematically overlooked – and could fill at least some of the vacancies.
In this respect, the shortage of skilled workers is partly a problem of our own making.
NEETs are not the “lazy youth of today” so often described – we are talking about a heterogeneous group with different reasons why they are stuck in stand-by mode.
I can only recommend our study commissioned by the rheingold Institute, which reveals these results and focuses on the different young people: Integrate young people into the labor market and thus counter the shortage of skilled workers.
What worries us, however, is that we know this all too well from our day-to-day work: The target group is being reached less and less effectively, for very different reasons.
You can read about these reasons in our study mentioned above.
Or let’s discuss the reasons too!
One thing is certain: We can only really tackle the challenge of disconnected young women and men if we stop always talking about them and finally start talking to them.
This appeal is also aimed at companies.
After all, companies looking for skilled workers must want to understand young people in order to establish contact and thus fill their training and job vacancies.
Bildung.table also took up this important topic again at the Skilled Workers Congress, for which we are very grateful.