Supply and Demand

Were you ever at school with kids that would put their hands up for everything? They would always know the answer to a question, would always want to be the first to volunteer for something, and they would be the one that hung out with the teacher instead of other normal children. Secretly the rest of the class wanted to strangle that person - well to be honest it was never so secret because they would also always be the person that had chewing gum stuck to their back...

Anyway there are over two-and-a-half million people doing that in the UK, and they appear to be having the same luck making friends. This two-and-a-half million is currently the number of jobless people in the UK. All - well let's say most - are putting up their hands at every available opportunity, hoping to get noticed and ultimately, get a job.

There are hundreds of reasons why this is the case - inexperienced youngsters getting overlooked; companies unwilling to invest in new employers when they have to be cutting back anyway; even just having more complex employment legislation can be enough to put off even the most conscientious of business from creating new jobs.

I would argue, however, that there is one issue that far eclipses all the rest: supply and demand. Supply far outstrips demand so that even if you are standing on your desk in the classroom with your hand up so high that it reaches the ceiling, no-one will even look twice at you.

Simply put, they can't. They can't offer you a job as much as they'd like to, because they have no jobs to offer. The reasons for these problems are all linked into the other problems in a sort of uber-depressing vicious circle.

Today the government fleshed out some of its plans to start curbing this massive deficit in the jobs market. Airport City will be a sizeable addendum to Manchester Airport that could create up to 13,000 jobs. The hope is to tempt some big international businesses into hot-footing it to Manchester to do their stuff. The initial plans were announced in March of last year as a part of George Osborne's exciting budget. (Yes, before you ask, that was supposed to be ironic.)

The problem with all this - and I want to state for the online record that I do applaud the schemes being put in place - the problem, however, remains that time and money are not never-ending and unless some generous northener is sitting on hundreds of billions of pounds that they want to use to invest in Airport City then the hopes of the two-and-a-half million will have to hold out a little longer.

There are a lot of positives to be taken from these schemes. But let's look at HS2 - the high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham for a moment. Though the first step has been taken towards its implementation, passengers will only be boarding these 200mph trains in 2026 which is (for the keen mathemeticians amongst you) 14 years (and probably many goverments) away, and decades behind international predecessors who already have 200mph trains that have more than three carriages at peak time.

So before this becomes a rant about the British rail network, I'm going to move on...

One of the best ways to get a job if you're young is through an internship. These days, however, even the internship market has been rocked by the credit crunch. There are fewer places available and people are turning to more drastic measures to get a decent job after graduation. Auctioning highly sought-after internships is becoming a normality. Graduates are paying as much as £8,000 for a placement just so they can get a foot in the door at some of the big companies.

First of all, this is still glorified nepotism, and you know how I feel about that. Secondly it ensures that all your employees are rich, and not necessarily intelligent. The result of this is creating elite businesses that only employ people from the elite classes. I come from a working class family, I was state educated, but I've done ok for myself in my education. If the only reason I can't get a decent internship is because I don't have the money, then this is quite simply wrong.

Fortunately in the media business - where I hope to end up one day - there are no internships on offer where one has to part with hard-borrowed cash.  The standard hierarchy of careers in the media goes as follows: work for nothing, work for not very much, get a permenant job for not very much, earn a bit more on the same contract. Retire. Die.

It's times like this that working for nothing goes in my favour. Small production companies may be willing to give me a shot as a runner as I will work for pittance. That way they save some money and get a hard-working employee that is willing to learn on the job and complete projects to a high standard (I put that in just in case any potential employers are reading this)...