This month’s labour market statistics show the employment rate at 75.5%, a fall of half a percentage point on the previous quarter. Unemployment has also risen by over half a percentage point to 4.3% – up from 3.7% a year ago, though rates of economic inactivity (the number of people not working, but not looking for work) has fallen during this period.
But youth unemployment and economic inactivity is generally much higher and the latter determined by large numbers remaining in full-time education. Students looking for work are counted in unemployment figures, but changes in the situation of young people (18–24-year-olds) not in full-time education are far more significant. This month’s figures show unemployment increases of 0.8% and rates of economic inactivity up by over 1.5% (unemployment is up from 7.1% to 12% since this time last year and economic inactivity from 15.3% to 17%). This gives a total of 950 000 in these two categories (over I in 6 of the entire age group).
The figures also show 190 000 young people aged 16-17 not in full-time education, 60% are either unemployed or economically inactive (a remarkable figure as it’s a statutory requirement to remain in full-time education or training until 18! It suggests that rather than transferring to some kind of post-16 education, many young people simply disappear from school roles – we should also recognise the growing numbers permanently excluded before 16).
There are small technical differences between these figures and those for NEET (an abbreviation for those Not in Education, Employment of Training). NEET totals fell after the labour market picked up from the financial crash – apart from the Covid blip- and changes in the school leaving age kicked in. But it would suggest that we are now back to over a million NEETs – if 16–17-year-olds are included, equating to around I in 7 of the entire 16-24 age group (the last official NEET statistics for 2022 put the figure at 1in 8).
The rise in general unemployment referred to earlier, suggests that the labour market is ‘cooling’. Facing rising labour costs (caused by shortages, not ‘greedy’ trade unions), employers who shed labour are likely to let go of younger workers first and young people who do enter the labour force are finding it harder to get a job (young people, both students and non-students, make up an important part of a ‘reserve army ‘of labour).
But increased economic inactivity amongst those young people not in full-time education could be due to other factors – a decline in their mental health (with only a few officially count as ‘sick’) or more finding alternative ways of making a living beyond the official economy? It also has to be remembered that the official labour market samples are only accurate by the extent to which the young people included, choose to define themselves!
Education, Economy and Society 