Does the coalition hate young people?

The real question raised by Suzanne Moore’s latest impassioned piece for The Guardian is whether the coalition government likes young people at all, or even gave them a thought when considering their cuts-reform double whammy.
 
Here’s the rub: “There are no jobs. The most beautifully manicured CV will not get you a minimum-wage job in a pub. Your brilliant degree is meaningless when what employers repeatedly emphasise is ‘experience’… Every rite of passage of becoming an adult – a job, an income you can live on, affordable housing, independence from parents – is being taken away.”
 
This is overstated for effect. It isn’t quite true that there are no jobs, but there are very few. And many of those that exist are unpaid internships on the margins of legality that should not really be called jobs at all. This week I spoke to a chief executive of one of the big companies still running a graduate trainee scheme who said this year’s cohort did not have a single friend with a job.