Laurie Penny, 23, never imagined she would find herself enmeshed in a world of poverty and the grip of the benefit system when she graduated with a 2:1 degree in English from Oxford University in 2008. Even with that name on her CV, she and her contemporaries have found it fiercely difficult to get work.
"It is hard to think of anybody who graduated with me in 2008 who has a job," she said. "People have tried and not been able to find anything, particularly when the recession hit, and you simply cannot live on £50-a-week jobseeker's allowance."
Penny and her friends found their dreams crumbling soon after graduation. Seven of them crammed into a house meant for three, able to go nowhere and buy nothing, living on cheap food which she says made them ill in the winters. Describing herself now as a welfare activist, she
writes and blogs on the plight of the young unemployed, who she says have no voice.
"We were living like a scene from Withnail & I, except there was no space to move," she said. "It was very miserable. People get very depressed – that level of poverty has a bad effect on your mental health, it makes people feel that nothing will ever get better. I know that is the situation for a lot of people, but for young graduates, middle-class people, it is a real shock. It is not sufficiently recognised at all – how poor the rates are in the benefit system."
