Almost one in every two teens in the Canterbury-Bankstown area is out of work, with the region now boasting the nation’s highest teenage unemployment rate.
Forty-six per cent of 15-19-year-olds are unemployed, almost twice the national teenage unemployment rate of 25.8 per cent.
Other hard-hit regions in NSW include Gosford-Wyong on the Central Coast, where 38.1 per cent of teenagers are without a full-time job.
One community leader in Canterbury-Bankstown yesterday blamed employer prejudice against Muslims and people with Arabic-sounding names for the region’s high unemployment rate.
“I know some [Muslim] ladies who have taken their scarf off to find a job,” Bankstown resident and Islamic Friendship Association spokesman Keysar Trad said.
Federal Employment Participation Minister Mark Arbib said the region was one of a number hard hit by the global financial crisis.
He said the unemployment rate was proof that the Federal Government could not afford to wind back its stimulus spending.
“This is not an issue of people not wanting to work, the issue is the opportunities are not there,” he said.
Mr Arbib said the Government’s Learn or Earn program would, from January 1, require young people aged 15 to 21 to be either in a job or at school before they qualified for the Youth Allowance. He said such a requirement would help tackle the youth unemployment problem.
A tripling of the subsidy for employers who took on new apprentices to $4850 was also helping, with 3500 new apprentices taken on this month, he said.
“The people worst affected by the global recession are teenagers,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
He said 40 per cent of the 140,000 people who joined the nation’s unemployment queues in the past 12 months were aged 15-24. While employers tried to keep on the workers they already had during the recession by cutting back their hours, they did not take on any new workers, which made it hard for school leavers to get a job.
The problem was compounded in the Canterbury-Bankstown area because it has fewer people with university degrees, 11.4 per cent compared with 17.4 per cent nationally and has more people employed in manufacturing and construction.
---------- Jobless teens ----------- Canterbury-Bankstown ................ 45.9%
- Gosford-Wyong ........................... 38.1%
- Northern Sydney (includes Hills District, Ku-ring-gai) ............... 27.8%
- Far West, Northwestern and Central NSW (includes Dubbo) .................. 25.1%
- Lower North Shore (includes Willoughby, Lane Cove) ................. 16.2%
- St George and Sutherland Shire ... 13.8%
Source: The Daily Telegraph
