The construction boom masked the longer-term transformational changes that are going on in Ireland, and all western economies
An Israeli friend of mine who advised one of the most embattled Israeli administrations of recent years told me that the key with any crisis was to get through the first two days.
Then the problem you thought was insurmountable would be superseded and eclipsed by the next one.
This two-day rule allowed that particular government to stay in power – reasonably successfully – for a full term, despite a multitude of crises.
Irrespective of whether you are in politics or business, in a crisis, time horizons shorten dramatically. It is a case of just getting through one panic to be able to meet the next challenge. But if our time horizons shorten dramatically, how do we see the big picture? If we are all focused on the next crater in the road, who is keeping an eye on where we are actually going?
Sometimes listening to the debate in Ireland and watching the constant firefighting, it is hard not to get the sense that few are focusing on what type of country we are going to be in a few years time. What are the consequences of the Great Irish Depression and what legacy will we be dealing with?
At the height of the boom, in 2004, the character Breakfast Roll Man came tome as I was having a coffee, looking out the window and watching the world going by the Spar in Inchicore. He was a loveable lad, working on the sites, making good money and spending it. He wasn’t the most academic as he pulled on his Johnny Blue and flirted with the Lithuanian check-out girl. He was an Irish male, in a job, with a future and he was having fun. But most crucially, he was looking forward to a future which could be planned. He had prospects and thus self-respect. More to the point, he didn’t have a short-time horizon; he was making plans for the next few years.
Now he and hundreds of thousands of Irish lads like him are among the major victims of the recession. And, if trends in other countries are anything to go by, the long-term legacy of the recession will be felt permanently in this class – young men without educational qualifications. We are having a ‘mancession’ in Ireland. A ‘mancession’ is a recession which affects young men disproportionately.
Looking at the live register figures published last Thursday by the CSO, this idea — the mancession — is borne out by the numbers. It is not that women are not losing their jobs, but that there are simply so many more men idle. We know that there are many reasons for this, but it is clear that the Mancession is one of the enduring legacies of the slump. There are 296,000 men on the dole as opposed to 172,000women, and the biggest increase in unemployment has come among men. When you examine the figure for long-term unemployed, an even more dramatic picture is painted.
According to the CSO: ‘‘The number of long-term claimants on the live register in August 2011 was 191,578.The number of male long-term claimants increased by 30,488 (up 28.3 per cent) in the year to August 2011.”
The gradual erosion of the economic strength of this less-educated group of young men has been going on in the western world for some time now. The building boom in Ireland masked this because the Breakfast Roll Men were gainfully employed on the sites.
In fact, just as the housing boom made the broad middle class in Ireland feel richer than they were, the construction bonanza made Breakfast Roll Man feel more secure than he actually was. By giving relatively well-paid work to so many young lads, the construction boom masked the longer-term transformational changes that are going on in Ireland, and all western economies.
The construction boom offset the reduction in manual manufacturing jobs where these men would, in the past, have found work. So for a decade or so, the boom on building sites obscured the employment implication for young men of fundamental changes in manufacturing.
Therefore, one way of looking at it is that the housing boom minimised the ‘penalty’ for not going on to more education and getting more training. Now it has been cruelly exposed.
Over the past three decades, the major change is the gradual fall in the average wage of the manual working man. In the US, the average wage for working men is, in real terms, now 32 per cent lower than it was in 1973.
If you look at the sectors worldwide that are now growing, they value the analytical mind where a premium is put on creative people who can work in teams. This appears to be favouring women, and we can see these developments in the service sector in Ireland, and the growing feminisation of professions such as law and medicine.
Another significant development is in education where, in Ireland, girls on average do much better than boys in their Leaving Cert and subsequently in college. A lecturer friend of mine from one of the big universities is amazed at the quality of the girls in his course and underwhelmed by the young men. This observation is again seen in the different grades achieved by men and women graduates.
Needless to say, there are many thousands of brilliant young men working and doing well in Ireland. However, the big trends regarding male opportunity are significant and, if not addressed, will have enormous consequences for society. If the mancession is allowed to take its course, the political implications of having hundreds of thousands of idle, bored and ultimately angry young men are all too obvious.
Ireland’s mancession is real. You can see it on street corners. You can see it in country towns as well as big cities, and it is not just economic. It is social, emotional and psychological too.
Just ask any parent with an unemployed son hanging around the house. At the moment, the government is firefighting the latest crisis and this gives no one the opportunity to see how the recession is actually affecting the fabric of our country.
As they say in football, the real general is the midfielder who is keeping his head when everyone around him is losing theirs. Is there such a person among our ruling and political class who will put the long-term interest of our people above everything else? At the moment, we are turning the country into a large debt-servicing agency, choosing debt servitude over economic vibrancy.
This won’t cut dole queues; it will protect those who already have wealth at the expense of those who don’t even have a wage. As male unemployment rises and rises, how long do you think these young lads will loaf around aimlessly before they realise that there is more to life than daytime TV, a few cans and Call Of Duty? How long will it be until they get really pissed off? And what then?
Sounds like you are talking about the onset of civil unrest.
It did not happen in the 80’s, the young men just left Ireland.
Young men will just leave Ireland , the only problem is that most only speak english, Germany is crying out for young employable men so is Austria.
My advice to young men is to learn another language never mind FAS courses that teach you to weld.
If they havent got their own families and a mortgage then emmigration is a good option , it worked for me , it was a positive thing , its been going on for years .
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Not with you on two points here David:
1. Performances of students in large universities are not differentiated by gender in my experience.
2. One doesn’t notice groups of unemployed males gathering on street corners. Their misery [and mind you, that of their female counterparts by the way] is played out in their homes. The desperation and unrelenting stress, destroying hope, more often goes unnoticed.
Good article David Another question we should be asking ourselves is why the grades in schol of the young lads are going down ? Why on average are the girls doing better than the boys ? , What advantage do girls have over boys ? What is it about the eduation system that the bad grades are got in the subjects of mathematics and science. ? What it is about our aduation system that cannot eduacate young people in basic mathematics or science ? Has the internet anything to do with it , Has it to do with the instant… Read more »
Sorry , typing error above ,
Should read
What is it about our education system that cannot….
Great article. Add to the unemployment figures the quota masked of young men who’ve already emigrated, not just from the construction sector, but across the board, every sector in Ireland, PhD’s down. Also those working as interns in Fas related courses. Might be a useful academic exercise to visit all the local teams in Kilkenny and see the prospects the players have, or how many already gone. We badly need stimulus spending, not spending on warfare that got US going after the Great Depression, but spending on infrastructure. We also need to leave the life sapping EMU and to use… Read more »
To answer your question David, nothing is gonna happen, there’ll be no riots nor marches by young angry unemployed men. What’s gonna happen if they did organise themselves? Nothing! No one cares about them. Society was given them the two fingers. Young women don’t need them, they have sex toys and sperm banks to meet their needs. These men never asked to be born, none of us did, but many of them are deciding to end their lives now because they feel useless. You’ll see more turning to petty crime because they’ve nothing to lose and everything to blame. They’ll… Read more »
Have to agree with the sentiment in some of the posts. It would seem there will be neither bold initiatives from government nor reaction from the unemployed/the poor/the disadvantaged.
It all bizarrely seems to roll on and on with little or no point to any of it, Ireland doesn’t even seem like very much of a country, just a collection of individuals, some doing well, the vast majority doing poorly. It is very odd.
When my frustration sets in and believe me it is happening quite regularly these days, I always like to replay the Nigel Farage “rant” as it was deemed then (2010). I am no eurosceptic but I’m heading that direction. Farage of UKIP was and still is lampooned and marginalised by “mainstream” thinkers, commentators and the media in general. He has actually been deemed insane by certain elements of our community. Whatever your views, political, economic or otherwise just listen to this and how it is even more rapplicable to our current sorry state.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gm9q8uabTs&feature=related
It is often said that the cultures of England and Ireland teach people to think of themselves as losers. The Celtic Tiger was just an interruption in this way of thinking. The habit of begrudgery is related to the self-image of loser. Thinking of oneself as a loser also happens in the USA, where we live by the half reality/half myth of meritocracy. If you fail, or become unemployed, you can easily see yourself as a loser and dwell on all the bad decisions you made or all the “breaks” you never got. You withdraw. You do not organize. You… Read more »
I spend a lot of time with young men and boys in a role as a sports coach. I also have a son and daughter who are finished school and two young lads in primary so I feel I have a broad perspective. Our education system and way of teaching is gearded towards the feamle student. My two younger sons will be at secondary schools before they see a male tecaher. The female teachers are young women and mothers who can empathise a lot more with girls than boys. They teach in sit down and be quiet style with teaching… Read more »
@Incident
“Euro is lost”…collection included of ‘trapped in an economic prison” Nigel Farage collection also included..
NB Croatia and The Cuna and international bankers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSVxAAeh4Mw&feature=uploademail
EU fails Ireland with impailment on the euro:
http://www.bankpoll.net/images/banksLogo07.png
Personally I don’t think that debt forgiveness on its own can dig us out of this hole because Ireland Inc. is ridiculously expensive to run and despite the fact that we proclaim to the World to be open, nobody wants to do business with us. Except most of the multinationals that gets taxpayers money or concessions to establish here. We not only have “ghost housing estates”, but soon after the next budget as proposed by this unimaginative and subservient Government, giving everything to the Banks and the Bondholders in a silver tray, we’ll be a Ghost State begging to the… Read more »
Below is an excellent description of the real problem, the big story. I agree with everything that is said, except the conclusion. I do not believe that Advanced capitalism (that is, finance capitalism) has run out of ways to preserve itself. I summarize why at the end. =================================== THE CRISIS OF ADVANCED CAPITALISM by Charles Hugh Smith Charles Hugh Smith publishes Foreclosure Crisis Weekly, dedicated to documenting the often-amazing foreclosure crisis. “All attempts to reform the Status Quo of advanced finance-based Capitalism will fail, as its historically inevitable crisis is finally at hand.It is self-evident that conventional economics has failed,… Read more »
“But most crucially, he was looking forward to a future which could be planned.” The people of modern Ireland, that includes you David, that planning is not what it used to be. Planning requires two things, certainties, choices and strategies/scenarios. Certainties are a crucial, and fast evaporating in the modern age. As the idiom goes, nothing is certain but death and taxes. If you find yourself structuring your life around these two certainties then you might as well hang up your boots now and put yourself out of your misery…..or move to Switzerland. Therefore we prioritize Choice and strategies/scenarios. To… Read more »
first of all i think the big disparity between male and female unemployment is an irish phenomenon, in britain the big rises have been in female unemployment, another factor in ireland is the huge increase in public sector employment during which is predominantly female, and this is protected under the croke park agreement, but the country is still borrowing huge sums to pay the wages of these workers,
Yes The time is right for social unrest. Its time we had a real left wing party in the country. A party that will tackle the massive pay of senior civil servants and cosy university lecturers.A party that will allow people to work for their welfare, regardless whether they were self employed. A party that will insist on no price hikes on electricity to pay for massive salaries in ESB.A party that will disband the croke park agreement and reduce the high salaries and increase those on lower salaries.WE have too many fat cats and it cannot continue. A real… Read more »
I am really baffled at how this problem of high male unemployment is going to get played out. One thing however is certain. The solution is not more “beer and circuses”. But this is exactly what the message maker centres acting on behalf of our corporate sponsors are telling us. It can be all be solve by changing to the sports channel and watching yet another Premier League game. The biggest problem faced in this regard, is that fact that the media has very successfully conditioned male behaviour. Be happy, wear the sports jersey. It is all a load of… Read more »
Stock Market Crash
It is the 5th Sept and that is 7th days before the Full Moon of the 9 11 11 ( Nine Eleven Eleven ) that is Saturday ….and Sunday …is MOON WOBBLE ……
take note of earlier remarks last months
Given what a bunch of thick useless sissy cowards men are – for example the Egyptian men mentioned above – it is a wonder that any society that included men ever managed to do more than bang the rocks together for long enough to make a decent spark.
This is not as good as your last few articles David because it smells of populism and the neurotic imaginings of a mind looking for something to do on a slow new day. I keep telling you, stop worrying man. Why are you always looking for something to worry about? 90 percent of the things we worry about never materialise and worrying is pointless. It is a form of insanity There were plenty of men hanging round street corners after Thatcher and her crew set about decimating the manufacturing base in the UK in the early 80s. Same in the… Read more »
“Sometimes listening to the debate in Ireland and watching the constant firefighting, it is hard not to get the sense that few are focusing on what type of country we are going to be in a few years time”. I’m lucky to be working in IT. I’ve worked in 2 financial software places in the last few years where the above “firefighting” is par for the course. There is NO long term thinking. They move from project to project without cleaning up as they go. They “meet” deadlines at all costs, quality being the first casualty. Eventually progress grinds to… Read more »
Ireland’s former top civil servant, who retired during the summer, received nearly €600,000 in lump sum and severance payments on top of a pension of over €142,000 a year.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0905/mccarthyd.html
Hi colm brazel re your post in previous blog; can’t post there for some reason. If you knew the myth of Cassandra you might not have applied it to me. Cassandra was able to accurately see and predict the future but was cursed never to be believed. Those around her were unable to listen or to hear the truth she spoke. So the metaphor is quite accurate really; but perhaps not in the way you intended :) By the way I do think there is a lot we can do about this crisis; both locally and individually. I dont know… Read more »
“As they say in football, the real general is the midfielder who is keeping his head when everyone around him is losing theirs. Is there such a person among our ruling and political class who will put the long-term interest of our people above everything else?” Yes, there is. His name is Roy Keane (remember his performances against Portugal and The Netherlands in WCQ 2002?), and unfortunately like yourself David, he’s not a politician and he’s anti-establishment. We need to re-visit Saipan. Keane was right. Most breakfast roll fellas knew that, it was the older generation who sided with FAI/MMcC… Read more »
It’s probably just me, but I find that there’s something mildly obscene about David’s neologism “Mancession”. The proper constuct should surely be Juvenocession from the latin words juvenis ‘young man’ and cedere ‘retreat’. That said, let’s be practical about young men’s unemployment problems. Young Irish men require jobs. Ireland is world champion grass grower, so we are known as the Emerald Isle. Grass cutting is not commonly thought of as a dangerous occupation– but it can be. A neighbour of my youth cut off a finger with a push-type lawn-mower when cutting another neighbour’s lawn for pocket money. Modern machines… Read more »
Not settled on articles point. Perhaps that is the point. Its impressionistic. I feel compelled to contribute the following in regards article…… Workplace no longer a mans world. Agreed. The nature of work I reckon is morphed into a new time space continuim. Machines do the majority of manual work now and making inroads into mental work too. So, work as a concept morphs into a new space. The new space presents a new paradigm of opportunity for humankind. Economically the new space presents humankind a different MO on income and earnings and money. Humankind settles down into the workings… Read more »
Will Mancession increase Batchelorhood and why should an unemployed man get married ?
Read the following :
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/frenchman-ordered-to-pay-wife-damages-for-lack-of-sex-2866907.html
Stock market crashes again Libya will not resume full oil production until late next year [or when N.A.T.O says so] Markets have no faith in IMF/EU A confederate European union with one finance minister mentioned for the first time in main stream media tonight Gold & silver prices still rising. Gilmore yapping on about how Ireland is the leading light in Europe and an example others should follow. Never mind the fact that their STILL is no money anywhere to repay all this debt worldwide. Unemployment rising Poverty trap [intern]jobs rising Suicide rates growing and unreported. No Government of Independence… Read more »
Looks like somebody left the FDI heroin lying around and we’re getting trashed again
http://online.wsj.com/video/irish-economy-pins-hope-on-recovery/0954B199-A2E0-4B53-99F2-AB824343CC9F.html?mod=googlewsj
I like this article. Especially the underlying message that in focussing on and arguing about specifics we can end up missing the bigger picture…where are we going…and more importantly…where do we want to go? What kind of country and society do we want for ourselves and our children? In the past decades private sector pay and conditions have steadily declined in the west as globalisation relocated manufacturing to low-waged regions. Now they are also relocating many service and support industries to these regions as the local populations become more educated. Their wages are generally rising as ours are falling. So… Read more »
hi I would like to share a perspective on this. I am 25 and feel I know alot about this cohort. I finished secondary school in 2004. The school was a large north dublin one, with a mostly working class profile. In my class there were 88 lads that I did the Leaving cert with. Over the last 7 years I kept in touch with many and would often meet a few round Christmas. Of the 88 9 went to University or an Institute of technology – Only 10 percent… Truely a sad stat About 25, so lets say a… Read more »
Billy, great post. Very informative. Thanks.
Read an article on Sweden about the growing number of young males who couldn’t find work, even pre-crisis. Like Ireland the guys were just not competitive enough with girls academically. The journalist was looking at it more from a family perspective, the girls generally are prefering to stay single rather than marry a guy on a lower income. Guys on the other hand have no problem marrying women earning less than them. So they were looking at future trends of a large number of underemployed or poorly paid men not being able to find a partner. This would be similar… Read more »
Living in a developing country shows how little people actually need to live on. There a couple might earn 900 dollars a month working in the typical public service job. They can afford a bungalow house on half and acre for 30,000 dollars within 40mins drive of the capital. They can still have money to pay for food and occasional trips etc. Basically they can’t afford BMWs and shopping trips to New York and they can afford housing. This helped me see clearly at the time the housing ‘scam’ in Ireland. Of course its possible to provide housing for everyone… Read more »
“THREE more tough Budgets will get us back on track, the country’s top economic think-tank predicts today.”
Isn’t that what said three years ago?
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/three-tough-budgets-to-get-us-back-on-track-2867226.html
In a review of 1976, Christina Murphy wrote in the Irish Times “The objections to jobs for married women had reached a vertiable crescendo at the end of the year. Civil servants, religious brothers, local councillors, VEC members, farmers, all leapt with an incredible agility onto the bandwagon. There were times when you would think that every job in the country was being held down by a married mother of nine, while thousands of starving unemployed male school leavers roamed the countryside destitute” Male and female rates of employment were equal at 65% each in the last review by the… Read more »
Sent an email to Joan Burton asking her what proportion of jobs advertised in Fas last yr paid the av wage or above , circa 35k.The reply was, “we don’t collate that sort of info”.Sent the same email to her UK counterpart, the answer was 31%.Fas is garbage, just a cushy gig for the staff.On the job training is non existent in ireland, apart fron burger/pizza making.40 % of jobs created by the economy in the past decade have vanished.
http://www.independent.ie Ross has a good piece re bankers.
Dermot Mc Carthy’s retirement package, 700k !
http://www.independent.ie
It seems pretty obvious that the type of people who manage to work their way to the top of the Irish political system are middle of the road, safe pairs of hands types, who are neither going to wrong the boat nor come up with anything remotely imaginative. They will never challenge corporate power or banks, that has been pretty much laid bare in the last 3 years of fumbling, stumbling and decline, with 460,000 people testament to the priorities. However it is worse than that, even within the grubby system they are not prepared to advance even a little… Read more »
In answer to David’s question, there seem to me to be three possible results of this policy: Firstly, the men could simply become effectively feminised, as is apparent in a number of countries. In the UK, for example, the men are taking on characteristics of what previously had been described as female. Research out of Oxford University recently indicated that British men spend as much as women on cosmetic products and services, and that time and money spent on apparel is close and rapidly catching up. Similar statistics come out of Sweden. Secondly, the men will just leave, as has… Read more »
This is a very interesting article David. I haven’t posted anything in quite a while although I have been reading your articles and related comments regularly. Sometimes it’s important to take a step back and try to see the wood for the trees — get some much needed clarity of perspective on things. Your point about the lack of consideration being given to exactly where this country is headed in the long-term is precisely the kind of thing I’m referring to. The issue of male unemployment is a potentially serious problem, from a social context. In order for it to… Read more »
Having read in the Irish times the result of a survey which indicated that 80% of the those questioned were happy most of the time, I discussed it with a friend of mine. His answer was that they were probably all in the same situation as he was, he had become so angry that his wife persuaded him to go the doctor who prescribed sedatives for him. his view was that most of those sampled in the survey were probable on some form of sedation as well, whether legal or otherwise. This would explain why we do not have large… Read more »
Lads, were are on the wrong end of an economic “Bust Out” to use a Sopranos phrase: ‘A “bust out” is a common tactic in the organized crime world, wherein a business’ assets and lines of credit are exploited and exhausted to the point of bankruptcy.’
As a parody of Irelands situation, the Sopranos Bust Out episode is well worth a watch.
I suspect that, as with a lot of things in life, consumerism in moderation is a very good thing. It is, after all, a description of trade, which is very much what caused the explosion in technology and advancements that we have seen. WIthout modern medical science most of us wouldn’t have got past the age of about 10. It is, as with so many things, a system that has simply got out of control. All the counter-balancing forces have gone, leaving us with nothing but forever unsatisfying consumption. My personal advice is to completely abstain from the media –… Read more »
NAMAland 9:30pm RTE 9:30
Shakespeare Sonnet 30
“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:..”
On Education: Players get close observation and immediate feedback from their coaches. In education this is sadly lacking, although it was part of my primary school education.
The new development below makes it easy for university and secondary teachers to immediately assess student learning and give useful feedback.
http://www.lecturetools.com/
Perhaps David should use this tool in his classes and give an assessment.
redriversix wrote: “Can we minimise the suffering of others ? or is my “ego” getting loose again !!” Yes…and definitely not! Not — that your ego is getting loose. Not at all. You care; and with the real coalface experience you have of adversity and self knowledge, you have a lot to offer to those around you who are less experienced. Yes — helping to minimise the suffering of others is all that many of us can realistically do for now. What I have valued about this blog is the opportunity to encounter the views of people who are thinking… Read more »
Noticed the Irish political coalition scam that works well in Ireland and cons the electorate every time? It works this way. Take a range of policies and examine the government position on each of these. The opposition, pre election, by way of policy documents pre election promises, individually make opposing, often radical opposing policies and promises, that pander to the electorate in that they reflect the views and feelings of the electorate. Post election the new coalition alter their policies on the excuse that its a coalition government, times have changed,they’ve had to give way to their partners bla, bla.… Read more »