Despite fears that slower wage growth might mean the labour market is ‘cooling’, latest statistics suggest otherwise, with a general participation rate of 75% and unemployment only just above 4%. However, ‘economic inactivity’ – those not working but not looking for work – still sits at over 20%, reflecting what commentators have termed a ‘great resignation’ where the experience of the ‘furlough’ and increased rates of sickness during the pandemic and after, has resulted in thousands of people, particularly those in late middle age, re-evaluating, but then withdrawing from future labour market participation.
Data about young people and employment can be complicated as well as inaccurate, often including 16-year-olds – who officially, are required to be in ‘education or training’. The most informative, is that for 18–24-year-olds ‘not in full-time education’. Here, recent months have seen gradual increases in both unemployment, but particularly economic inactivity. For the three months to June of this year, these stood at 12.2% and 18.2% respectably, while figures published in August, show 14.5% (over 1 in 7) of all 18–24-year-olds as NEET (not in education, employment or training). You have to go back to the years following the financial crash, to find higher levels of levels of inactivity.
But with the labour market (at least supposedly) in a better place, why are large numbers of young people not working? The Financial Times recently offered its own take
citing 240,700 young people inactive due to long term sickness, a rise of 28 per cent compared with the same period in 2022. If ill health has pushed up inactivity rates across all age groups, it argued that in contrast to older workers, more likely to suffer from physical ailments (hence Wes Streeting’s desire to jab them back into the workforce) one in five 16- to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training last year had a mental health condition. It reported large increases in young adults receiving health-related disability benefits.
The FT also cites links between low labour market participation and lower levels of educational qualifications, 60% of inactive young people being educated to GCSE level or below – with only 10% being graduates. But it has to be said that experiencing mental health issues invariably limits one’s educational progression.
Though every individual young person will experience specific issues, this is also symptomatic of a much broader crisis in the relationship between young people, education and employment, something either ignored, or at best, not understood by policy makers.
With the collapse of tradition avenues of transition from school to work, young people are now forced to navigate, but also told they are responsible for determining, their own individual futures. A ‘privatised’ existence rather than a collective experience, is much more likely to generate feelings of helplessness and isolation, but also deeper conditions of anxiety and depression.
After negotiating a school system where you are encouraged to ‘invest in human capital’ – in reality, to stack up more and more qualifications just to stand still; chuck in a few thousand (usually much more) pounds of student debt, with a ‘bullshit’ rather than a graduate job at the end and then invariably an accommodation crisis, it’s surprising so many are able to survive at all.
Falls in labour market participation, as well as flattening enrolments in post-compulsory education, may be an indication that unlike their increasingly burnt-out but still economically insecure Millennium predecessors; more and more of Generation Z are no longer prepared to go along with an increasingly unsustainable existence. Rather than a great resignation this may be the first tentative sign of what Siegal (2023) terms a Great Refusal. (https://www.teddsiegel.com/books).
Education, Economy and Society 
Good stuff Mart