THE Prince's Trust recently released a report which showed the number of young people unemployed for more than two years is the highest it's been for almost two decades.
In Scotland nearly one-quarter (23%) of young people aged between 16 and 24 have been unemployed for more than a year.
I understand the personal side of these statistics. I was unemployed for two-and-a-half years and the barriers I faced felt endless.
When the job I had done since school ended unexpectedly I started looking for work. At the beginning I had lots of hope and excitement about getting a new job, but over time that faded away.
The hard realities of life without employment sunk in and no matter how hard I tried it affected everything else in my personal and social life. I stopped engaging as much with others and that's a skill everyone needs to succeed.
I really wanted to work so I went round every shop and business I could, handing out CVs and watching countless times as I saw them thrown right in the bin. You can only approach the same employer so many times so I also went to the job centre regularly and applied for jobs which said "required no experience".
The longer I went without work, the harder it was to find any.
When I did get interviews, nine times out of 10 there was no feedback so I was unsure what I was doing wrong or how to improve.
On three occasions, I managed to get a job in a call centre but it never lasted. I really wanted to work but you can't throw someone into a call centre and expect them to start cold-calling people when their confidence is at rock bottom and you've not given them any training or guidance.
I've seen so many young people lose all hope and ambition that they will ever find a job and so they just give up. By the time there are more jobs available again, people will have been out of work for so long they will have no confidence or experience of routine anymore.
After so many knock-backs I personally became depressed and have seen many friends and other young people go the same way.
You feel like you're in a black hole and you're never going to come out of it. I've seen young people who should be working hard and enjoying life ending up on ESA (Employment and Support Allowance) because of the effect of their depression.
Luckily, it wasn't the same for me. After two years the jobs market was still terrible and at that point I knew I had to make a drastic change to my life. That's when a friend suggested I get involved with The Prince's Trust.
The team exercises and one-to-one support helped me get my confidence back.
The mental health and well-being courses made me look at my life from a new perspective. I got help with CVs and job-seeking skills to give me a better chance of getting into full-time work.
The Prince's Trust made a huge difference to my life. It's shown me what I'm capable of when given the chance.
The new figures for youth employment came out last week and showed that fewer young people are unemployed.
That's positive but all the young people still without work can't be forgotten. I worry about what will happen to them when all those who have avoided the recession by doing more training or education start looking for work. It will be even harder to find a job then.
The advice I would give to any young person is don't give up hope even though they may feel, like I did, that there is no hope.
I'd tell them The Prince's Trust can help them improve the skills needed to get the job they want and, importantly, the other skills needed to cope with working in that job.
That way, if an opportunity does come up, they have a fairer chance of making it work.
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