YOUTH are bearing the brunt of unemployment according to new Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures released this week.
According to the ONS figures, unemployment among 16 – 24 year olds has risen to 16.1%, meaning nearly one in six young people are unable to find work.
The overall unemployment rate has continued to rise at the end of 2025 reaching 5.2% which represents 1.88 million people out of work – the highest level for eleven years and youth unemployment in the UK is now the highest in the eurozone.
Ben Harrison, director of the Work Foundation at Lancaster University, said: ‘The pain is not evenly spread. Young people, disabled people and men are bearing the brunt of this rise,’ warning: ‘More young people are actively seeking work, but too many are struggling to secure it.’
The usual arguments from the capitalist class and its media outlets has been, as always, to blame increases in pay and workers’ rights for causing the collapse in employment.
They have been exerting pressure on the Starmer government since its election in 2024 to overturn all its pre-election pledges to reverse the vicious campaign of austerity waged by previous Tory government, which saw wages fall below levels of 2010 while inflation massively increased.
Reports throughout the press and BBC yesterday, predicted that the Labour government was seriously considering dumping one of the central pledges it made – to pay adults of all ages the same minimum wage.
In its election manifesto, Labour pledged to remove ‘discriminatory age bands’ to ensure that all workers over the age of 18 get the same rate of pay.
At present workers aged 21 and over must get at least £12.21 and hour while those between 18 and 20 receive at least £10.
According to a report in the Daily Telegraph yesterday, following meetings with business groups who insisted that the Labour pledge is ‘pricing a generation of young people out of the workplace’, ministers are now ‘considering abandoning the policy’.
The Telegraph reported that: ‘Three government sources told the newspaper that ministers feared pushing ahead with the proposals would further push up youth unemployment.’
Yesterday, the BBC reported that government sources have confirmed that ministers are ‘interested’ in delaying the increase, but added that the government was ‘unlikely to reverse the commitment entirely’ – just push it back until after the next general election.
Luke Johnson, former chairman of Pizza Express, told the BBC that the planned rise in the minimum wage was a ‘tragedy’ for youth because there was set to be a ‘substantial rise in unemployment’ in the coming years due to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other factors.
These comments were denounced by Andy Prendergast, national secretary of the GMB union, who said it was ‘nonsense’ to suggest equalising minimum pay rates would destroy jobs.
Prendergast told the BBC Today programme that youth unemployment has been increasing for ‘a very long time’ and equalised rates had not even come in yet.’
He added: ‘Employers tell us that every single improvement in workers’ rights is going to cause a problem and time and time again they have been proved wrong.’
None of this will deter the Labour government from caving in to the pressure from the bosses to make the working class and youth pay the cost of British capitalism diving into recession, strangled by a massive national debt of over £3 trillion and an economy that is collapsing.
The working class has demonstrated it is not prepared to being driven back to the starvation days of the ‘Hungry 30s’ recession and young people, the generation that is the future of society, will not tolerate having their lives shattered to keep bankrupt British capitalism from collapse.
The working class, with youth at its forefront, has had enough of bankrupt capitalism.
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 kick out the Starmer government, replacing it with a workers government and socialism.
Join the WRP and Young Socialists to build up the leadership required for the victory of the British Socialist revolution!
