LONDON. In a move that has sent shockwaves through the Department for Work and Pensions, British policymakers have announced that they are ‘looking closely’ at the Dutch model of youth unemployment. Yes, the Dutch model. The same nation that brought us legalised cannabis, clogs that serve no practical purpose, and a terrifying obsession with cheese has apparently solved the age-old problem of how to stop young people from spending their twenties in a state of suspended animation on the sofa, watching Netflix and eating cereal directly from the box.
I have been dispatched to Amsterdam, a city where the smell of tulips and regret hangs in the air like a damp blanket, to investigate this miracle. My mission: to discover if this ‘no dead ends’ strategy is a genuine beacon of hope or just another bureaucratic fairy tale designed to make us feel inadequate about our own crumbling institutions.
Let me paint you a picture. In the Netherlands, if you are a young person and you lose your job, you don’t immediately spiral into a pit of despair involving Universal Credit forms, a sanctions threat, and a phone call to a call centre in a building that looks like a 1970s prison. Instead, you are apparently guided into a ‘pathway’ that involves retraining, mentorship, and a gentle shove towards a job that doesn’t involve a zero-hours contract and the constant threat of having your shifts cancelled via text message at 10 p.m. the night before.
I spoke to a Dutch official, a man named Jeroen who looked like he had just stepped out of a Rothko painting. He wore a turtleneck and spoke in a calm, measured tone that made me want to throw a stapler at his face. ‘In the Netherlands,’ he said, ‘we believe that every young person deserves a future. We do not write them off. We invest in their potential.’ I nearly choked on my stroopwafel. ‘Invest in their potential’? What is this, a kindergartener’s art project? In Britain, we invest in their potential by giving them a very long wait for a Jobcentre appointment and then asking them why they haven’t applied for a job as a ‘Social Media Influencer for a company that sells artisanal beard oil’.
The Dutch model, I discovered, revolves around a concept called ‘werkgever servicepunten’ or ‘employer service points’. These are essentially shops where employers and jobseekers can meet, and where a trained professional will sit down with a young person and actually help them find a job that might be, heaven forbid, even remotely related to their skills. Not just any job. A job with a future. A job that doesn’t involve licking envelopes or being the person who stands outside a supermarket holding a sign that says ‘We have avocados’.
Meanwhile, back in Blighty, our own ‘Youth Obligation’ scheme is going precisely as well as you’d expect. Young people are being told that if they don’t find work, they will be forced to do unpaid work experience at a vape shop or face sanctions so severe they might as well be banished to the Isle of Wight. The Dutch, by contrast, have a scheme called ‘Jongerenloket’ which translates roughly to ‘Youth Counter’ where a nice lady called Saskia will sit with you and explain that your life is not over just because you got fired from your job at the clog factory for being ‘too cheerful’.
I fear, however, that the British adoption of this model will be a classic case of ‘picking the raisins out of the fruitcake’. We will take the bits we like – the cheap bits – and leave the rest to rot. We will call it ‘Work Experience 2.0’ and then outsource it to a private company run by a former hedge fund manager who thinks that ‘human capital’ is a phrase you say before eating someone. The Dutch have a wonderfully civilised approach to everything, including unemployment. They treat it as a temporary setback. We treat it as a moral failing.
But perhaps I am being too cynical. Perhaps, just perhaps, this government will actually implement a system that treats young people as something other than statistics. Perhaps we will see a future where a young person can lose their job and not be immediately branded as a lazy, workshy millennial who wants nothing more than to watch daytime television and cry into a bowl of instant noodles. Perhaps. But I’m not holding my breath. In the meantime, I’m off to find a cheese shop. It’s the only part of the Dutch model I can wholeheartedly endorse.
I’ll be in the bar. It’s the only ‘no dead end’ I trust.
