Young people bearing brunt of UK jobs downturn, thinktank warns
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/15/young-people-bearing-brunt-of-uk-jobs-downturn-thinktank-warns
Posted by OGSyedIsEverywhere
Young people bearing brunt of UK jobs downturn, thinktank warns
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/15/young-people-bearing-brunt-of-uk-jobs-downturn-thinktank-warns
Posted by OGSyedIsEverywhere
28 Comments
Common sense would tell you an excess of older more experienced workers would get more priority over unproven young adults.
Yet we pay a think tank for these answers.
One of the key drivers in having a shortage of jobs is business costs.
A lot of people with some HR, management or self-employed experience tend to chime in and mention the Tax and NI rises of the last year, but this neglects the fact that when you look at the longer term you find we’re multiple years in to an emvironment of business energy prices and rents continuously creeping upwards. That is the biggest reason they aren’t able to offer many positions (and hours) in the first place.
And being taxed more, and having their pensions raided, and having student loan interest rates frozen….
It is dire out there for young people, even just casual hospitality work has become difficult to get due to lack of experience. The days of “No experience required, full training provided” are long gone, even most kitchen porter jobs require experience now. The sector is becoming increasingly dominated by those with university education who couldn’t find work in their field.
Young people bearing the brunt of the jobs downturn, unlike how they bore the brunt the pandemic, or Brexit, or the 2008 crash, or the….
Line must go up, houses must go up, pension must go up; the young, they yearn for the mines.
They are aware.
Purely anecdotal; was interesting as an older Millennial talking to my younger zoomer family members at Christmas dinner. One is nurse, the others have a mixture of non graduate jobs or unemployment.
They all put the blame purely on Labour; Minimum wage being pushed too high and more taxes on jobs. These are the people Labour should be winning by putting up minimum wage – but even they can see it doesn’t matter what minimum wage is – if no one can find a job.
Personally, I believe Labour inherited a bad situation and made it worse. High interest rates, global unrest, and loss of confidence had all put a damper on investment and jobs. AI and people working till older has also added to the pressure. Labour have then come along made things worse – with most businesses leaders thinking the next 4 years is going to be bad but what comes after is going to be even worse.
If I was their age – I would leave.
When it’s costing an employer approx £27k a year to employ a 22 year old on minimum wage it’s hardly a shock. Well done labour.
How much did they pay that think tank? It’s pretty obvious that the younger generations are fucked
“warns?” It’s been happening for years! It’s already here!
Older people can’t get hired either but I appreciate the fact that it’s important for a young person to get that first experience
My pension pot used to quote my retirement age as 67. I logged in today to have to changed to 68! When did that happen?
Also stop taxing people under 40 huge amount of money.
Stop having different minimum wages from the younger people. It should be 1 minimum wage.
Stop capping the tax free earnings and make sure they rise with inflation.
Make sure that national pensions match the national minimum wage for people born 1990 onwards.
Not surprised. I have 2-3 years of experience under my belt atp and I get rejection emails because there’s prob someone out there with 5-6 willing to take a pay cut just to stay employed so their CV doesn’t get obliterated with an unwanted and unexpected employment gap.
Can’t imagine how difficult it is for fresh grads.
And yet they also keep saying they want high immigration
Youngsters today
I’ve applied for about 60 jobs in the last 2 weeks.
I’m 18 years old attending a university in a major city.
I’ve had 18 responses with 14 saying due to a large amount of applicants they won’t even let me get my foot in the door.
1 cited lack of xp on the job.
3 gave me a phone call.
1 said that for part time I needed to be available at all hours for at least 4 days.
Another said that at the end of the interview they’d give me a ring later and not got shit after a week.
Last one made me sit down and draw pictures of a shoe in a group and essentially tell me I needed to be a US retail worker levels of constant fake happiness to make a damn sale.
Its fucking rough man.
The same young people who voted in their droves for Labour, not seeing the obvious implications of a Labour economy?
Well unfortunately the turkeys have voted for xmas, and should not be surprised on christmas day (this is what they voted for…after all)
Haha you think?!
I graduated in 2010, I’ve worked solely in shitty economies, and it’s not getting any better.
I’m no longer young, but the current generation likely hasn’t known a good economy. They were born into a decent economy, but by the time they entered school the signs were there for the financial crash. Their entire lives are defined by austerity, recession, or underfunding of public resources.
Not surprising. It cam be difficult to get that first job, and doubly so when economic times aren’t great. And even if they get that job, when redundancies come knocking, that old adage ‘last in, first out’ springs to mind.
Yeah, but are the boomers ok? Have they been on enough cruises this year?
First class Masters in engineering here. By day I do engineeeing design and assessment, by night I’m zipping up my Tesco uniform 🥴
Cost of living up, rent up, jobs down, its always the young that bear the brunt
When haven’t young people beared the brunt of every decision?
Whether it be taxes, salary stagnation and inflation or sending them to their deaths to fight a rich man’s war.
Young people have always taken on the brunt of all the negative consequences from decisions made by the rich and old.
I can confirm. I was lucky enough to get a job on my first application, seriously LUCKY
my friend however, has better qualifications than me exam wise, is genuinely muhc more articulate and communicative than me and has applied to 19 jobs yet got none of them whatsoever.
Young people ALWAYS take the brunt in this sort of situation.
Ok but have we tried increasing the number of people looking for jobs? What about doing this ensuring that wages stay low and conditions don’t improve?
Truly a baffling problem to fix
Not for long. Any historian worth their salt would say with geopolitical events unfolding as they seem to be that there’s a middling-to-good chance they’re going need cannon fodder fairly soon.
I’ve been applying to jobs since I finished GCSEs (I’m 17 currently) and time after time I get rejected and it’s the same thing with everyone I know my age. Everywhere wants to hire people with experience (which is fair enough) but I can’t get any experience if I can’t even get a job in the first place
That skillsaw has no dust extractor on. Its against health and safety law so a young person would get a yellow carded and sack from work
Does the Pope shit in the woods?
Obviously. All we’ve done is throw the young on the fire, at least since 2008 but I’d imagine we’ll back to Thatcher.