This week, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released their latest labour market data, highlighting the pressing need of tackling youth unemployment. The data shows that 13.6% of young people are unemployed and the number of young people in long-term unemployment has increased by 30,600 (53%) over the past year. Young people are now more than three times as likely to be unemployed than any other age group.
In our 2024 Youth Voice Census report, we heard that accessing good quality work locally and having access to fair pay is important to young people. However, our data shows that half of young people (50%) said that travel/location was one of their biggest barriers to work. Nearly 3 in 10 (27%) young people in work disagree that they are paid fairly for the work they do. In addition, 15% of respondents indicate that flexible working has decreased in the last 12 months. It has been well established that young people want to work; they want good terms of employment with pay above minimum wage, flexibility, and stable contracts. Yet, over the last seven years, our census data shows that accessing good quality work is a challenge.
Last week, as part of the Government’s ‘make work pay’ plan to grow the economy, raise living standards across the country, and create opportunities, Labour released their Employment Rights Bill. The Bill brings forward 28 individual reforms including ending zero-hour contracts, abolishing fire and rehire or fire and replace, providing flexible working from day one, establishing a new Fair Work Agency to bring together government enforcement bodies, delivering strong protections for pregnant women and a reform to pay that considers the cost of living and removing discriminatory age bands.
As part of the Government’s ‘Next Steps’ document, there are other reforms which will look to be implemented in the future (subject to consultations) such as the right to switch off, reviews into parental leave and carers leave systems and a strong commitment to ending pay discrimination by expanding the Equality (Race and Disparity) Bill to make it mandatory for employers to report their ethnicity and disability pay gap.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner says the Employment Bill marks “the biggest upgrade to rights at work for a generation”. We know that there are positive changes that will directly affect young people such as increasing the minimum wage and reducing age brackets, introducing ‘day one’ rights and the ban on zero-hour contracts (with 1 in 8 accessing work in this manner compared to older workers).
However, it is important that these changes will not reduce hiring, negatively impacting our young people. There is a risk that the costs felt by employers may increase and in return they may be less likely to hire young people as they require additional training and development compared to older workers. Youth Employment UK are working closely with the Government to ensure more young people are in good quality work, particularly through their commitment of the youth guarantee.
In addition it is important to work with employers. Youth Employment UK have developed an evidence informed tool, the Good Youth Employment Benchmark, which allows employers to measure the quality of their youth employment practices. The Benchmark is valuable in ensuring that employers have a clear youth employment strategy and a vital long term approach to youth employment, ultimately working towards ensuring there are quality work opportunities available for young people.
