Youth unemployment falls slightly –but almost 1 in 5 still NEET.

This month’s unemployment figures show a slight fall in youth joblessness. There are 941 000 young people looking for work (32% of these are in FT education) with the rate of unemployment falling by 0.5% to 20.5%. For those young people not in FT education the figure is 18.5%, a fall of 0.8% on the previous quarter. Last month however, the ONS released figures showing 14.9% of all young people (nearly 1 in 5 of all 18-24 year olds) were NEETs – only a 0.2 fall on the previous year. This is a more accurate reflection of the difficulties young people still face in entering the labour market.

Unemployment as a whole has fallen by  over 90 000, but is still a million more than before the economic downturn. There are now 30.09 million people in employment, the highest ever;  but wage increases less than half the increase in inflation. In other words it’s still the case that more are working for less.  Of the 250 000 increase in employment, 95 000 increase in part-time employment and 80 000 in self-employment. 1.47 people are now working part-time because they can’t find a full-time job –the highest ever figure.