We should be ashamed of youth unemployment in the UK

Britain's youth unemployment rate is a shameful 21%. And there are many more 'semi-hidden' unemployed. We owe it to them to create proper jobs.

Mostly we tend to think of entrepreneurs as a good thing. They drive growth, innovate, employ people and move us all forward. But is a forced entrepreneur as good as a voluntary entrepreneur?

A press release just out from peopleperhour.com is pleased to announce that a huge number of young people are setting up their own businesses and so have signed up to the site (freelancers use it to sell their time by the hour). 89% more are signed up this year than last year. Good news indeed, you might think. You'd be wrong. Why?

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.