Last week I heard two things which I found both hard to believe and, at the same time, entirely credible.

The first was a piece on the radio news reporting that the current level of unemployment in the population aged 16 to 24 is currently at unprecedented levels.  The second was a collection of stories told me by my hairdresser on how difficult it was for her to find a couple of trainees for her small independent salon.

She has been looking for getting on for six months since her last couple of juniors qualified.  As a small business, she could only keep on one of them, so the other one moved on to take a job in a nearby salon.

Since then, each time I’ve been to the hairdresser there has been a different young person there to take my coat or to get the towels organised.  None of them lasted more than a couple of days.  I’ve jokingly suggested that the team must be being horrible to the youngsters for them to leave, but I know that can’t be true: two of the team of 6 did all of their training at the salon and everyone else is a long term employee; all of which indicates a good working environment.

The stories of each new short lived potential employee were generally ridiculous to a greater or lesser degree.  Each applicant is invited to spend a day as a try out in the shop.  Several who appeared to do OK on the day, and who accepted an offer to start as a trainee, simply failed to show up on the following day; apparently lacking the back bone to say that they didn’t want the job.

A couple went along the road to the shop for their lunch on their try-out day and didn’t come back.  And the most recent one failed to turn up on the appointed day as expected.  Due at 9am, she called at 10:30 to say that she’d not been able to find the shop and so had gone home again.  When asked why she hadn’t called for directions when she was in the area, she said she’d no credit on her phone.  Either she really did completely lack any kind of initiative, or had no imagination to come up with a better lie.  Whichever, I couldn’t help but think she wouldn’t have been much use to a business.

Even though this is the experience of one small business, which may be unrepresentative, it did reflect a slightly different light on the unemployment figures.