Some of the truths about unemployment

I would like to dispel some of the myths that surround the current unemployment situation. After working in a Jobcentre for seven years before retiring and dealing mainly with the long term unemployed of all ages it's about time that people heard the other side of the story, the unreported one.
It's true that unemployment is rising, but not as fast as we are being led to believe because for several years now, women with children are gradually being moved from Income Support to Jobseeker's Allowance as soon as the youngest child reaches a certain age and this age has been coming down. It used to be sixteen but when I retired a couple of years ago it was down to seven and I think it will continue to go down to five. A high proportion of these women are 'single' mothers, many have never worked and most also left school without any educational qualifications whatsoever. In fact a lot of them could barely write properly or complete a simple 'basic skills' questionnaire and many actually didn't possess any social skills either.
In fact there are so many young people who lack any of the necessary skills required to assist them in life it's frightening. I believe that much of this is because they 'bunk off' school whenever they feel like it yet no-one seems to challenge this and the parent is usually oblivious and probably not very well educated themselves anyway. Perhaps we need more inspirational teachers and a change of teaching methods to engage these young people in the important matter of preparing them for a successful and productive life in the outside world once they have left school. They also need better careers guidance as many of them have completely unrealstic ideas about what they want to do (if anything) once they leave school for the world of work and the words 'graft' and 'dedication' don't appear in their vocabulary.
Many of the older generation of long term unemployed also lack many of the basic skills but they have also become conditioned to a life without work and a lot are just downright lazy. There were ocassions when we had three generations of the same family who had never done a day's work between them, all attending the Jobcentre at the same time. They will all grumble that they don't get enough money to live on but their housing and council tax is all paid for them and many of them smoke heavily and drink too so they always have sufficient funds to accommodate those vices! You'd be surprised at how many of them also pull out the most up-to-date, all singing, all dancing mobile phones equipped with the latest ringtones, camera, video and internet as it is possible to cram into one gadget and they probably have the biggest flat screen televisions at home too! Yes, there are some on the fiddle, working on the side and not declaring their earnings but if staff have their suspicions it gets passed onto the fraud department for further investigation but sadly, not all are caught.
Despite every effort being made to prepare these people for work I used to feel that I was flogging a dead horse and I think many Jobcentre staff feel the same even now. The rewards came helping those who were desperate to get back into the workplace after being made redundant, sometimes after many years with the same firm or those with the right work ethic who would do anything and any job just to get off benefits.
Sadly, we don't have the numerous production industries that we once had because it's been cheaper for many British firms to move production overseas. That together with the use of robots in production has meant that there are just not the number of skilled and unskilled manual jobs that there once were and I wonder how long it will be before the country wakes up to the fact that service industries and hospitality just aren't enough.