EMPLOYMENT OF YOUTH

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21231, 30 September 1940, Page 6

EMPLOYMENT OF YOUTH

With the object of finding congenial employment for every boy and girl leaving school a State department is to be formed in New South Wales. The aim is laudable, but whether the objective can best be achieved by State action is open to question. Some action is necessary, because the problem of placing youth in the industries or professions in normal times is becoming increasingly difficult. Slumps, booms and wars have so mangled the ordinary avenues of useful employment that the problem no longer automatically solves itself. The incursion of the State farther and farther into the economic and private lives of the people has led to the tendency fo leave even the provision of employment to a paternal Government. When it was left free of State interference, industry generally had to shift for itself and provide employment for the people. Now even industry’s capacity to employ is controlled by the State, and not unnaturally industry has therefore concluded that the responsibility for the employment of the people must also be accepted by the State. State control has not yet proved that it is a cure for unemployment. It may employ all able-bodied workers at the expense of the State, but whether that is an economically sound proposition is another matter. Generally it has a most undesirable effect on the national debt. The State, however, is in effective control at the moment, and the result of the New South Wales experiment will be watched with interest. Of course the employment of boys and girls when they leave school has never been a simple matter. There has always been a lag, and perhaps there always will be. It is naturally a matter of much anxiety for parents, first to choose a congenial avenue of employment and then to find a place in it for the boy or girl. There was a time when parents were glad of the opportunity to place their children in positions even at a beggarly wage, just to place their feet on the first rung of the ladder. The laws controlling wages are different now, and the employer hesitates to employ a boy at the higher wage unless he sees the prospect of the boy earning his wages. The State has been given the responsibility of educating youth for its life’s work, and perhaps it is only another step in the same direction to open an avenue of employment when the process of education is completed. Thus dependence on the State increases and the effect on succeeding generations must be watched carefully.