Young people are stuck in a cycle of high rents and insecure work

“A LOT of our lives are very precarious. Although there’s a lot more opportunity there’s little security or stability. A lot of the jobs that young people are facing are insecure or are short-term contracts or are not well paid in comparison to the standard of living.

It seems to be that there’s a whole chunk of young people in Britain who are stuck in this precarious cycle of high rents and insecure work, low pay. That includes students. I’ve qualified as a teacher recently, but to sustain myself at uni I’ve worked all my four years. I’m in retail now, on a short-term contract.

It’s not unusual for young people to be in and out of short-term contracts. And something that frustrates me in work is that I’m doing exactly the same work as maybe my colleague younger than me or my colleague older than me, but we’re all getting a different pay based on our age. That’s something that shouldn’t be happening.

I’m chair of the Unite Youth Committee. Within that committee our three big things are the pay disparity among young people, mental health and rent. If I could wave a wand in 2019, I would have something done about the price of housing, whether that’s through rent caps or more social housing. But also I would change the world of work, and not have any zero-hour contracts and have wages that people feel they can sustain themselves on.

Mental health is another thing that I would want to solve. There is a mental ill-health epidemic and no wonder, given we’ve got an insecure job market, and insecure housing, plus so much more pressure on young people, with Instagram and Twitter, to feel validated.

I’ve always campaigned for mental health services, partly because of my own experiences. I went to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) when I was 16 but then I got moved straight to the adult service because there was not a young adult service, and it was just a long waiting list. My magic wand for Scotland for mental health would be to bring in a 16-25 service.”