The Resolution Foundation reckons over 4 million were on some kind of furlough at the start of the year, and that 1.9 million have been like that or unemployed for over six months. After that long you lose the skills and habits to just walk into a new job.
It’s not getting better any time soon. The Tory Covid Re-infection Group is pushing for rapid lockdown unwinding as soon as the sun comes up in the hope of a magic economic back-to-normal. Lets hope Honest Boris has learned his lesson – and Saint Rishi doesn’t see it to his personal benefit – and they don’t kill another 50 thousand unnecessarily. But whatever rate we reopen society and the economy, they’ve changed. Hospitality has been on short-time and the arts have been shut for a year. They have suffered a kicking, but people will still want to go out so those sectors have a future. Some sectors are broken. In the mean time we’ve learned to shop online; we’re not commuting to the office and buying sandwiches for lunch; we’re not travelling and the tourists aren’t coming. There’s a lot of people here who won’t have jobs in the long or medium terms. What are their options?
Retraining for a new career sounds like a good idea. You can teach yourself anything from YouTube. If you’ve been through higher education – like our leaders and their acolytes – you’ll appreciate this; you may even know how to. The majority of those without jobs won’t know where to begin. Those from lower-skilled backgrounds, or who’ve been in careers and out of training for a long time will have problems finding and adjusting to training – even if it exists, and mostly it doesn’t. They need proper structured training options, and for it to be communicated to them. There needs to be a range: training for training, short introductory stuff, and full-blooded apprenticeships. (We also need to return the ‘apprenticeship’ word to learning a trade, not just giving a company a few quid to keep someone off the dole, but that’s another story)
What would they be trained to do? Is there work there? There’s certainly lots to be done. Climate change is the big issue, that will take two decades of practical change like we’ve never seen before. From insulating and replacing the central heating in every building in the country, to fitting windmills and solar panels and rewiring the national-grid. It will need building sea-defences, raising sewers and moving towns. The next two generations are going to be busy.
When should we start, you can’t apprentice people in lockdown? Trueish, but vaccines will have us unwinding in the next few months and it takes some time to plan – and let’s be fair, the current government hasn’t shown the concept of planning to be one of its stronger points. And the older among us don’t appreciate what you can do remotely. YouTube wasn’t a joke, you can do a lot with video and the generations who’ve grown up with the internet are much more receptive. But you need the material, the organisation and to communicate it to trainees. When should we start? Last March.
Who’s going to pay for it? Well, that’s not really an option; who’s going to pay if we don’t? The payment will have to be made. We can do it proactively: plan, build skills and industries which make it cost effective, and leave a constructive legacy. Or we can do it in a panic, really expensively.