yopper

plural yoppers

1. informalA person employed under the Youth Opportunities Programme in Britain in the 1980s.

   There must be a real drive in the trade union movement and the Labour movement to recruit Yoppers and the unemployed.

   1981, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party, page 72

   3 more examples

   When we came back to Blackburn I went on the Youth Opportunities Scheme and became a Yopper, which was the worst thing you could call a teenager in those days.

   2011, Susan Boyle, The Woman I was Born to be, page 120

   I started my first business as a Manpower allowance recipient, and, indeed, I entered my first job as a “yopper”.

   2013 April 10, David Morris, “Tributes to Baroness Thatcher”, in parliamentary debates (House of Commons), volume 560, column 1697

   Mrs Matheson […] owes her first taste of work after Fortrose Academy to the old Youth Opportunity Scheme […] Mrs Matheson said: "I was a Yopper first with the school cooking class and then at Tulloch Castle and the Education Centre, both in Dingwall."

   2021 October 18, Neil MacPhail, “Teenage taste of school cooking experience led to 36-year career for Heather Matheson who has retired from Resolis Primary School”, in Ross-shire Journal