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Our commitment to young people
Over the next five years, COVID-19 will continue to impact young people's employment.
On 14 May 2020, Australian Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, MP revealed that "youth unemployment has risen to 13.8% up from 11.5%" and this was confirmed by the Grattan Institute:
"youth unemployment rose to 13.8% in April, or double the headline unemployment rate. With more than 20% of Australians aged 15-24 also unemployed, more than one third of younger Australians are without paid work or working fewer hours that they would like."
This position for young people worsened by 18 June. The Treasurer stated, "Youth employment fell by 103,000 [jobs] making up 45% of jobs lost in May. Youth unemployment is now at 16.1%.
Prime Minister Morrison warned on 18 June,
"... the great risk of young people not in a job before they are 22-25 .... can lead to a lifetime welfare dependency...."
We believe it's time for the addition of Entrepreneurship to the Education, Employment and Training pillars for young people.
Small and family owned businesses account for almost 93.8% of all businesses in Australia.
Of these 76% are micro business employing 1-4 people.
We are not suggesting that young people will become millionaires with many, many staff.
In fact, many of the young people we have worked with are self-employed with no staff.
We believe it is time to grow the small business pipeline and give young people the support tools and resources to own their own business.
Small business ownership is a legitimate post-school and unemployment alleviation outcome and 2, 300, 000 Australian business owners will attest to this.
What if young people could at least replace their current Centrelink benefit or underemployed wage with their own income from running their own business?
What if, instead of hopelessness, young people have a reason to get out of bed every day by working in their own business?
That's what our youth enterprise programs are committed to achieving.
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