Frozen out: Young people and the public sector

 Social insecurity

 Time for renewal

 Public Works...

"It’s our futures that are on the line when governments privatize. We really depend on public enterprises, both for providing accessible public services and for providing decent jobs. Our education has been affected, our health care, our future employment prospects, and our environment. What will they sell next?

"Sometimes it scares me to think about what it will be like in ten years or so. Very few of my friends anticipate having a rewarding job with good pay, decent benefits and security. It seems like we're walking backwards as a society.

"We can challenge the privatization trend. They’re not beyond our input or control, even though governments might like us to believe otherwise. The recent protests against the WTO in Seattle and around the world demonstrate that young people are aware of what's going down. We know that tax cuts don't benefit us and that privatization will make it tougher for us to get started. And we're willing to fight these trends."

Kate Laxer, York University graduate student and student activist

Social insecurity

Finding a job, getting an education, caring for aging parents, raising a family — these are all enormous challenges for young people living in an era of disappearing public services and shrinking support networks. A generation of young people is reaching adulthood never having known the full benefits of a well-functioning public sector. Many don’t expect to enjoy the same living standard as their parents.

Some pundits and commentators dub today’s young people the ‘me’ generation. To the extent the label is valid — and it is inaccurate to paint all young people with this brush — it is the result of a political and social climate in which young people have been left to fend for themselves in a mean and lean society. Wholesale government retreat from public services is nothing less than the betrayal of a generation.

To make matters worse, youth are seeing their prospects for higher education disappear. Deep funding cuts mean declining access to universities and colleges. Rising user fees make post-secondary education an increasingly difficult path for young people. A debt load of $25,000 can be a daunting proposition for many students — particularly those who face uncertain job prospects.

At the same time, post secondary education has become a requirement across the job market. A growing number of students are mortgaging their futures without knowing if they’ll be able to pay back loans. While full-time enrolment is stable, and even growing slightly, part-time enrolment — often the most vulnerable students such as low-income people, single parents and people with disabilities — is declining.

Disappearing public services also create unmanageable situations for everything from child care to eldercare. With a weakened network of public supports, young people struggling to make ends meet are confronted with enormous costs as private for-profit companies take over services such as child care and home care. The twin ironies are that young people not only turn to these services for support, they could also be providing these services if the public sector were creating jobs instead of shedding them.

With the ground constantly shifting beneath them, more young people are staying at home longer. The insecurity that defines their lives makes them less able to contribute fully to the economy by buying and furnishing a house, travelling or having children. Instead, they focus on using what little money they have for periods of unemployment between contracts, student loan repayment and further training.