Youth employment crumbling under weight of recession – 1 in 6 18-24 year olds looking for work even before new ‘class of 09’ graduates hits the jobs market

12 May 2009

The latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) labour market statistics – published today in error ahead of schedule – highlight a dramatic deterioration in job prospects for young people in the first three months of 2009. Commenting on today’s ‘truly appalling’ figures, Dr John Philpott, Chief Economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), says that 1 in 6 18-24 year olds are already unemployed, even before this year’s crop of school leavers and new graduates enter the jobs market.

Dr Philpott continues:

“The shock in today’s jobless figures is not that they have been released a day early but rather that they paint a far worse picture of the state of the jobs market than expected. A rise in unemployment of almost a quarter of a million in a single quarter is truly appalling. There is some comfort in the fact that the rise in the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance is less than expected, though these latter administrative benefit figures are subject to revision.

“The ONS figures confirm that there were 286,000 redundancies in the first quarter of the year. This is in line with the CIPD forecast of 300,000 redundancies, made at the turn of the year, and with our current expectation that UK unemployment will peak at 3.2 million in the second quarter of 2010.

“While the recession is now hitting every sector, every occupation and every region the big losers are young people. Youth employment prospects are crumbling, with the toll of job losses falling most heavily on the under-25s. One in 6 18-24 year olds in the jobs market are already unemployed and these are yet to be joined by the ‘class of 09’ school leavers and new college graduates. It will be a bleak summer and autumn for this year’s crop of young talent.”

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