Employers should play part in helping younger talent

On top of this, the report predicts that the cost to the Treasury of higher spending on benefits and lower tax revenues will amount to an additional £2.9bn.

Meanwhile, young people themselves look set to lose £14.4bn through lost earnings and lower employment prospects.

This follows news earlier this year that one in eight graduates were unemployed in the last quarter of 2020 – almost double the rate over the last three years.

These findings would seem to suggest that whilst the economy as a whole is starting to recover from the pandemic, young people will still be in a precarious position for some time to come. One factor in this is that sectors that have already begun to recover don’t employ large numbers of young people, whereas those that typically do continue to be the hardest hit.

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, graduate underemployment became a problem for young people with lower qualifications as the newly graduated could not find jobs in their chosen field and were forced to take on roles that they were overqualified for, making it much harder for those less qualified to enter the workforce.

Now, with the impact of the pandemic on graduate roles, this looks set to happen again. This new report has already found that the decline in working hours during the pandemic for those with no qualifications was five times higher than those with degree-level qualifications and has projected that demand for employees with lower-level or no qualifications will continue to fall.

The government has already made some intervention on youth unemployment with the launch of the Kickstart scheme which gives funding to employers who create new jobs for 16 to 24-year-olds in receipt of Universal Credit who are at risk of being unemployed long term, but more support will likely be needed.

Employers too must play their part by taking on younger talent through graduate schemes, apprenticeships and other routes. They may also want to think carefully about employing young people who are overqualified for the role. Instead of defaulting to employing graduates, they may want to explore ways to help those from disadvantaged backgrounds gain a foot on the career ladder.

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