Job experiences that last for a lifetime

THE slump in the availability of summer jobs, reportedly at their lowest level since 2018 - Covid years aside - is a symptom and a problem for the stuttering UK economy.

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It is being blamed to a significant extent on Rachel Reeves’ Budget which piles on the costs for employers and makes them unwilling to take on part-time support, preferring to shoulder the extra seasonal workload with their permanent staff.

But while the impact on the economy of losing an army of gainfully employed young people who could be adding to the nation’s GDP is alarming, the effect on the youngsters themselves is just as grave.

I credit my summers of work, during holidays from school and college, as among the most valuable and memorable experiences of my life. Almost all of them helped me in my ‘proper’ career as a journalist and writer but were just as valuable for their own sake - not to mention the spending money they earned me.

My first summer jobs, when I was at an age that would probably today be deemed ‘too young’ for paid work, started on arable farms. ‘Roguing’ in the 1970s involved walking through fields of cereal crops pulling out wild oats and other unwanted plants to ensure a clean crop at harvest.

Whole teams of boys and girls, some just 10 or 11 years old, would pile into the back of a high-sided farm trailer and be hauled by tractor out to the field. Then, carrying an empty fertiliser sack, they'd line out along one edge of the field and follow the tramlines walking through the crop pulling out the unwanted plants and putting them into the bag.