Since the start of the pandemic,
employment of young people under 25
has fallen by 7%,
which is much higher than those of other age groups.
For instance, the BBC reported that
young people are more likely to seek
Universal Credit now, in this post-COVID era.
And people have also suggested that,
including LSE researchers, have suggested that
actually young people have seen a far higher
drop in wages compared to older adults.
It really does suggest that work has disappeared for young people
and disproportionately so, because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
So, this is really what we try to unpack in our research.
We try to examine to what extent
labour market outcomes were disproportionately,
negatively affected for young people,
in the post-COVID era.
And really try to unpack if the COVID-19 pandemic
widened pre-existing inequalities and labour market outcomes.
In our analysis, we looked at the UK Labour Force Survey,
which is the main and official source
of unemployment statistics in the UK.
And then we looked at a big
set of data covering 2003 up to 2020,
to model the effects before COVID and after COVID.
And we then looked at three different age groups.
So, the under 25s, which are typically considered the young people,
the 25 to 40s, and the over 40s.
And we looked at a number of these key labour force outcomes.
So, employment, unemployment and economically active.
And then we also unpacked the effects for the full-time employees,
and the part-time employees.
In terms of measures, we started
by looking at how the different age groups
do fare in terms of employment
and unemployment before and after COVID.
If COVID-19 has hit all groups equally,
we really expect that gap to be similar
to what we found in the pre-COVID.
But this is not what our analysis has found.
Initially, in terms of employment,
we found that under 25s post-COVID
were 14.5% less likely to be employed
compared to those over 40.
Before the pandemic, that was 6% less likely to be employed.
So, just there is a difference in the probability of being employed.
And then when we looked at, 'Has the gap widened or not?',
we also found that the gap has gotten bigger.
So post-COVID with a 1% increase in unemployment,
we're seeing that young people are 2.5% less likely to be employed,
compared to 1.4% pre-COVID.
So this really does tell us that,
although there were existing inequalities between ages,
that gap has really widened and the differences have been
exacerbated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
We then try to unpack this by industry, to see
if there are some sectors that were more affected than others.
And what we found here was that younger people working in
Public Administration, Education and Health,
and also Finance and Insurance
were less likely to be employed
during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to older people.
The question then is, 'How did young
people really benefit from the furlough?'
Because existing reports
in the media do suggest this is the case.
And we also do pick this up.
So, we do find that younger people
saw less of a change in their work hours
and that didn't really change across groups,
and this could be because of furlough.
So, younger people did benefit from
the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, in the short run.
In the long run, however, it's not really clear that
young people will benefit,
if they are let go when the furlough scheme is removed.
So that's definitely something to watch out for,
which policymakers will have to contend with.
The second thing is, it's not really clear if
all young people really benefited from furlough,
because for instance, the furlough scheme
doesn't cover people who were recently employed,
who just started a job.
It also, which could be young people.
It's also really not clear,
how the furlough protected those on
zero hour contracts and in casual work,
which again tends to fall on the shoulders of young people.
Really, in terms of a long-term emergence from COVID,
what policymakers and researchers all have to care about is,
how do we enable some sort of a green recovery,
and give people, young people especially opportunities in sectors,
which can play an important role in this recovery,
which ideally should be green,
and also address issues like climate change?
Something that comes out of our research is also
the importance of safety nets and also,
increasing dignity of work.
So Stephen Jenkin's research for example,
at the LSE has shown quite robustly
that poverty is not really a set state.
And that people move in and out of poverty over the years.
This is actually really important when we think about
strategies of how we can target young people,
and also the importance of having a good safety system
to support people when they are in these kind of transition periods.
Alan Manning's research shows us that setting a minimum wage
is really important in terms of
removing some of the negative impacts of recessions.
And it doesn't really seem to have the negative impact that
economists tended to expect in terms of employment outcomes.
And this is where setting a living wage becomes really important.
Because it's not about giving people the bare minimum,
but about giving them enough money to live with dignity.
So this is a really important area to kind of focus on
how do we get people that are doing these jobs,
people who are working in zero hour contracts,
or who are taking on a flexible
working or part-time job at the moment,
to really have dignity in their work and have enough money to
live in the conditions so that they can support themselves?
Currently, there are some important discussions going on around
setting the level of the living wage
and the minimum wage from 2020 onwards.
Another point that's actually worth mentioning here is that,
we already have a solid set of policies in place
but it's really about how do we
implement these policies more effectively
and how do we implement them for the COVID-19 era?
For instance, unemployment support already exists at a local level,
and there's a combination of services
and advisors that could support people
in both education and retraining, to go back to work.
But what we need to ensure is that
the supply of the contractors is certain,
that local authorities can actually deal with
the spike in demand for unemployment services,
so they can really support those young people.
So, in terms of emerging from the
COVID pandemic in the post-COVID era,
an important consideration we'd face both as
policymakers as well as members of society is really
how do we enable a just and sustainable transition?
In this pandemic we've seen the importance of
people in the care and healthcare sector,
whether they're nurses, doctors,
and we've also got this epidemic of loneliness,
which has been discussed significantly in the UK.
And definitely, jobs in the care sector
would be much harder to automate.
So, there could be a lot of potential to get young people
skilled in delivering care work,
which might also be,
be able to address parallel challenges that we face.
Similarly, when it comes to addressing climate change,
a COVID Recovery Package could involve investing
in sectors, which can enable a green transition,
for instance, in renewable work, where there
could be opportunities to employ young people
doing both actions, which could be
skilled, such as product innovation,
but also in less skilled jobs in terms of actually setting up
renewable energy, infrastructure projects, et cetera.
So, we have a lot of opportunities I think, coming forward,
but we should be dovetailing labour market policies
along with other challenges we face
both COVID as well as other challenges like
loneliness, automation of work and climate change,
in order to enable a very just and fair and sustainable transition.
Any recovery plan should put young people at the centre
of policymaking and prioritise
how they are doing both in the labour market,
as well as the opportunities for their growth in the future,
in order to have a sustainable recovery.