That’s the opinion of United Way chief executive Geoff Sharp, who was one of 25 community and industry leaders at a youth employment forum on Friday.

The forum, facilitated by Ballarat City mayor Des Hudson and convened by Sarina Russo apprenticeships, discussed how to prepare young people for the work force and what employers could do to support them.

“I feel that there are significant barriers to young people gaining meaningful employment in Ballarat and I wanted to explore not what a government could do, not what schools could do, but what community coming together could do to reduce those barriers,” Mr Sharp said.

The group, which included representatives from local, state and federal government and key local employers and service providers, will meet again on Monday to further discuss five focus points developed at Friday’s forum.

These included how to reduce an employer's risk when taking on young people without work experience, the importance of mentoring young employees, and targeting new industries for job pathways. 

Mr Sharp said the traditional pathways to employment applied to fewer industries and growth industries like IT, health care and service industries had a less defined path. 

“So much of the way we still operate is based around that you have one job and that’s your career for life and the truth is that that’s not how it works for anyone anymore.

“The employment market is changing really rapidly and it’s moving to IT and information and health care and service industries which don’t have the same long history compared to trades which have a long history of apprenticeships that they've been able to call on,” he said.

“As we transition towards these knowledge economy and service jobs it may be that we’ve not developed these pathways as strongly as we’ve had this transition.”

Monday’s meeting will be followed by a youth forum.