Are you a Yuffie? 

I remember, during one of my last classes at UCL, the topic of conversation turned from the cultural implications of Algerian independence to the subject of life after university. Our lecturer, a grumpy ‘progressive Hoxhaist’, told us that things had never been worse, and out of the 20 or so students in the room, only one or two would have found any kind of full-time employment by the time the year was out. ‘But it’s not fair!’ cried one girl, ‘we’ve all worked so hard over the last four years, we’re all clever [speak for yourself, I thought], we all have debts and we’re just going to be ignored!’

‘Who are you going to blame, then?’ responded the lecturer. The question was a pertinent one: who were we to blame? The government and the banks? No, too simplistic, particularly for a class of ‘clever’ soon-to-be graduates. Our parents? Again, not an option, given that most of us would be living off their generosity for the foreseeable future. Ourselves? Well, maybe, as our lecturer went on to tell us, we were just a bunch of pampered bourgeois keener on whingeing than getting stuck in.

He had a point. Two years later and I am still a contributor to the youth unemployment statistics. In fact my generation of over-educated, underemployed twentysomethings has come almost to pride itself on its plight. Just as we remember the 1920s for its ‘Bright Young Things’, the 1960s for its Hippies and the 1980s for its Yuppies, we’ve decided that we are Yuffies: young urban failures. Future generations, we think to ourselves pompously, will look back and pity us.

So what entitles Yuffies to think of ourselves as particularly hard done by? We’re not the first generation to find ourselves out of work.