When Labour MPs eventually hoof Keir Starmer out of office, the Prime Minister and his neighbour in No. 11 will surely come to be remembered for one failing above all others: the youth unemployment crisis.
Look at unemployment among Britain’s young and an even bleaker, yet more concrete, picture emerges
Figures just released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the unemployment rate climbed again to 5 per cent – up half a percentage point on a year ago. Worse: the true unemployment figure is probably a tad higher. The single-month estimate for February is implausibly low compared with neighbouring months (it’s 5.5 per cent in March) and so, when it falls out of the three-month average next month, an even worse picture will likely emerge.
Looking at HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) payroll data shows 104,000 jobs were lost in the year to March, falling by 28,000 in a single month. Provisional estimates for April suggest 210,000 jobs lost in a year and 100,000 in a single month. Though the ONS points out that April figures are always likely to be revised up due to their coming at the start of a tax year.
But look at unemployment among Britain’s young and an even bleaker, yet more concrete, picture emerges. Separate analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), also released today, shows the fall in youth employment is not far off what we saw in 2008 and again during the pandemic.
