Are young men taking the brunt of the economic downturn _in Ireland_ ?

akkadian

Are young men taking the brunt of the economic downturn [in Ireland]?


55% YES

45% NO
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Your Reaction

• Yes. They're taking out mortgages and all, and they're suffering regarding joblessness. But not me. Young women are taking the brunt of the hard times too.
  Dellus Maximus Ireland
• Only in the sense that most of those who lost jobs in the building business are male and young. But the young are a resilient and flexible group, they'll get through this. The ones I fear most for are the late-twenties early thirties group who have never known anything except the mirage that was our boom' of recent years. They have mortgages they can't service, credit card debt that is terrifying and probably live in some God-forsaken sub-urban wasteland of badly built boxes laughingly called houses. They're the ones suffering most and are least equipped to deal with it all.
  Art I Culer France, Metropolitan
• To a large extent yes. But then men have always borne the brunt (just look at the outcry when the Supreme Court decides it's OK for men to have their own sports club). On the other hand, a whole new generation is having the chance to see the world and get some valuable experience. It'd be a shame to see that tradition die out.
  Hugo Ireland
• Yes, for the simple reason that many tens of thousnads of young men were dependent on the building trade and have lost their jobs, I accept that many tens of thousands of women have also lost their jobs and are at the hard end of this Government's failed policies, however young women tend to be able to adopt better to the prevailing down turn, young women seem more able to return to education and unskill where as young men tend to continue to look for the same type of work that is no longer available, these are just my own observations, however, as the Government continue to pursue policies that will drive women from the work place I think the pain will be shared by all, the cut backs in child support, the reduction in rent supplement, the threatened reduction in child benifit are all designed to drive women out of the work place and back into the traditional position of carer with 87% of such care being carried out by women, this Government knows who it is targeting, this Government hopes to drive the young men and women who are unemployed onto the cattle ships while the woolly jumpers continue to live in relative comfort.......
  The Irish Observer Ireland
• The entire bottom half of the earnings spectrum are bearing the brunt and will be doing proportionally more so (than the top half) from December. If that's where 'younger men' live, then I guess that's a yes.
  Joseph Ireland
• Mammy, Yes Billy Bob? Whats the brunt of the economic downturn? Its like being in a tunnel that has no light at the end........
  The Irish Observer Ireland
• What about the 50 somethings that have lost their jobs in Waterford Glass and especially SR Technics. two years off retirement my husband was made redundant and told that his promised pension that he had paid into for 43 years was maybe now worth about 20% of what he expected. Not enough to live on and no way at his age to recover.
  cm Ireland
• So the stats say anyhow! The younger foolishly over feasted on the cheap credit or forbidden fruit when those who were around a little longer stood back a little and guessed that this was going to end in tears as it now has. If they took a gamble they've now got to pay. Many of those borrowing hundreds of thousands of the funny money must have realised there was something wrong when they were getting the whole shabang, kitchen sink and all included in one fell swoop when their parents and their parents before them had taken a life time and likely never reached the same dizzy materialistic heights. Maybe they thought if such trustworthy institutions as the banks handed them this cash and the state actually encouraged it then regardless of their ability to pay back or not they would at least never lose the house even if the expensive cars and extras might have to be surrendered! The real culprits of the credit abuse has to be the speculators who knew full well that the 'pyramid scheme' was going to collapse at some point and used the golden rule of corrupt capitalism which is, 'never use your own money'. They knew the banks would have to take the hit and the banks knew the state would have to stand by them Sodom and Gomorrah which even sounds Irish! existed here and now the walls have fallen down and all the greed and corruption has been exposed. Amen
  colm Iran (Islamic Republic of)
• Of course they are. Young men take the brunt of everything. Whether it be an economic downturn or your rampant anti-drink puritanism or war. Btw pretty well all the pictures I saw of those Friday protests lied. the tended to show the old, fat, well-fed guys holding banners up front of the protest. A total focus in the pictures on the kind of permanent & pensionable blokes who become shop stewards and suchlike. But the protest I stood watching must've had 90% female attendance in it overall. Because protected, pensionable public service employment is largely only for girls. Leaving the men - esp. young men - to face the viscissitudes of freedom as best they can. And of course the girly well-paid, permanent & pensionables were out protesting on Friday, in a de facto sense, to tell the government to leave them alone to enjoy their average 60k wages and instead to find the money by hitting the young blokes even harder by taking their dole from them alltogether. After all what do they care about 400k blokes? Haven't they been raised on a generation-long, monotonous propaganda diet from the liberal Irish Times been telling them that young blokes are evil creatures?
  Btw I might be old but I don't think I'm grumpy. In fact I think I've seldom been happier with life. For the free market is sorting things out. We are facing like-as-not a 20% reduction in the size of the public sector allied with a 20% cut in their wages to give an overall 40% cut in the size of big government.
  owen United States Minor Outlying Islands
• Young men and young women in their twenties and early thirties are undoubtedly the ones who are going to bear the brunt of the economic collapse. How many have already emigrated I am not sure, but it will increase over the coming years, anywhere will be preferable to the Republic of Anglo-Ireland. Run by NAMA man for the purpose of paying off the 100 billion bill for the Celtic Tiger party. Many of them have lost jobs, many have mortgages they cannot repay on poorly built houses that will never be worth what was paid for them. Many unwisely bought into the bling culture (as they were instructed to do) and borrowed to keep up with expectations. You can sneer at the decklanders and the young slightly foolish married couples who populate the suburbs and provincial towns, but you should not feel too smug at their downfall. These are the people who are supposed to provide the economic backbone of the economy over the next 20 years, they are the ones who are supposed to pay the taxes to pay for the bank bailout, staff new businesses, keep the banks afloat with repayments, look after the ageing generation that have betrayed them, and of course somehow try to have and raise children here. How on earth the government expect this group of people to do any of this is beyond me, trust me, this country has been completely wrecked and any young person who has the ability will get out of here as soon as possible
  Paul Ireland

mikemac

Yes, it's not young men I'd most worry about. They are young, resiliant and could be confident enough to emigrate or at least retrain into something else.
And many will have already travelled and will have no issues doing it again. I'm aware the recession is global

It's those in their thirties upwards who nothing else but labouring (not tradesmen) who are in trouble.

I do expect our shocking high national suicide rate to increase

akkadian wrote: »

The Irish Observer Ireland
[*] two years off retirement my husband was made redundant and told that his promised pension that he had paid into for 43 years was maybe now worth about 20% of what he expected. Not enough to live on and no way at his age to recover.
cm Ireland

**** me, that's harsh

akkadian

Ireland had the youngest population in Europe at the time of the credit bubble and maybe still does. So Ireland is in every way getting the worst from this.