SKY-ROCKETING youth unemployment figures just released reveal that nearly one million young people in the UK are not in employment, up from 500,000 in July 2024, the highest since 2021, reflecting the collapsing state of the UK economy and exposing the failure of PM Keir Starmer’s government to ‘grow the economy’ amidst the raging world economic crisis.
A whole generation of nearly 987,000 young adults, 16-24, is now out of work, education or training, with many suffering from the impact of lost and disrupted education, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Jonathan Townsend, the chief executive of the King’s Trust, a charity that helps disadvantaged youths, said the career prospects for those out of work would worsen the longer they were out of the jobs market.
‘Unemployment can have a profoundly negative impact on a young person’s life and the longer they are unemployed, the harder it is to re-engage and get back into work. Around a third of unemployed young people are long-term unemployed and recently we have seen mental health being a key factor in this.
‘Our youth index finds that almost one in three out of work young people have experienced a mental health issue due to being unemployed and that their mental health has even stopped them from attending interviews or applying for jobs.’
Youth unemployment surged again last year with worse to come as employers slash hiring in preparation for Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s jobs tax raid.
Some 595,000 young people are classed as inactive, while 392,000 are unemployed but looking for work, an increase of more than a quarter over the year.
Experts said the rise in inactivity was being fuelled by a mental health crisis among young people, many of whom are struggling with the after-effects of pandemic lockdowns.
Barry Fletcher, the chief executive of Youth Futures Foundation, said he expected the changes to disproportionately affect young and low-paid workers.
Business groups have warned the changes will make employers less likely to hire young people and those looking for their first job.
Fletcher said: ‘We are seeing vacancies drop – they are still higher than they have been in historical periods, but definitely dropping – and hiring intentions are dropping. Young people tend to get hit first by that.’
But Employment Minister Alison McGovern dismissed the social crisis, cynically saying: ‘Our Get Britain Working reforms will deliver genuine opportunity by transforming Jobcentres, ensuring every young person has the chance to earn or learn and joining up fragmented work, health and skills support.’
These so-called ‘reforms’ are victimising benefit claimants by forcing them to accept low-paid and unsuitable jobs or lose their Universal Credit benefits and forcing mentally-ill and disabled people off sickness benefits.
This is all to reduce the public sector deficit, along with cutting winter fuel payments to pensioners and enforcing the 2-child cap on child benefit.
Meanwhile, certain sections of the military are calling for army conscription for young people and for the unemployed to fight foreign imperialist wars, to be paid for by slashing foreign aid and attacking the working class.
Youth and workers are taking action all over the country against degenerate capitalism. The issue is to overthrow it, in Britain and internationally.
Young people in their hundreds of thousands repeatedly joined pro-Palestinian demonstrations in cities in the UK and throughout the world. Students have set up encampments against the Israeli genocide and against their governments arming Israel.
This generation is the future of society and it will not tolerate state attacks on their lives and futures.
Now is the time to build a mass revolutionary movement of youth and students in the Young Socialists to lead the working class and its trade unions in a general strike to immediately kick out Starmer’s warmongering government.
Youth will be in the forefront of this mass movement of the working class that has had enough of bankrupt capitalism and will go forward to set up a workers’ government and bring in socialism.
