It's grim out there ...

The news that unemployment has risen again is bad enough ... but to see that more than one in five young people aged 16-24 are out of work is deeply worrying. It isn't clear as yet how many of these will enter education or training in September, but there will be fewer as the end of the EMA and its replacement by much smaller local schemes starts to bite. At the same time, we have seen the end of the gap year, at least for the time being, as many more young people attempt to get into university before the rapid incresae in fees. The effect will be, and we will see this next week, a huge rush for a very limited number of places through clearining, and many thousands of young people with Level 3 qualifications but no job and no course.