Unemployment among young people in the United Kingdom has been decreasing since spring 2021 and currently trending lower than the pre-pandemic level, although several issues of concern remain to be addressed, independent UK think-tank Resolution Foundation found in a study published Monday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 31st January, 2022) Unemployment among young people in the United Kingdom has been decreasing since spring 2021 and currently trending lower than the pre-pandemic level, although several issues of concern remain to be addressed, independent UK think-tank Resolution Foundation found in a study published Monday.
"In fact, the youth unemployment crisis feared by many at the start of the pandemic did not transpire: by early autumn 2021, the 18-24-year-old unemployment rate was lower than it had been just before the pandemic," the study said.
The 18-24-year-old unemployment rate fell from 10.5 percent in winter 2020 to 9.8 percent in autumn 2021, and 76 percent of respondents aged 18-34 who were in work before the pandemic but lost their jobs during the winter lockdown had returned to work by October 2021, the findings showed.
The think tank links the good employment dynamic to the UK government's Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, a package of grants for employers to retain and continue paying employees in lockdown from March 2020 to September 2021.
Two other factors curtailing unemployment were young people quickly reentering the workforce after lockdown and many others who were able to "ride out" its economic impacts by entering the education system. According to the study, the proportion of young people aged 18-24 in full-time education had increased by 3 percentage points from the pre-pandemic period, to 35 percent (an increase of 119,000).
Nevertheless, the research found that some groups of young people had been more likely than others to experience unemployment during the pandemic.
"Unsurprisingly, the biggest factor correlated with younger respondents' extended worklessness was the type of sector they had worked in before the Covid-19 pandemic, in February 2020. Younger respondents who had previously worked in a sector that would be highly affected by social-distancing restrictions and lockdowns (arts, hospitality, and non-food retail) were more than two-and-a-half times more likely to experience worklessness for three or more months than those from other sectors," the study said.
The think tank recommended that UK policy makers and employers further support young people on two fronts - first by supporting them with the confidence and knowledge to find and apply for work, and second by ensuring that good-quality jobs, offering sufficient hours and room for progression, are available to both new entrants and those young people looking to move jobs.
