David Vance SubstackRead More
The just released ONS Unemployment figures show that in the quarter ending March, the UK lost 210,000 jobs and the unemployment rate is now sitting at 5%!
Rachel Reeves keeps insisting that Britain is “back on track” but these latest jobs figures – especially for young people – tell a very different story.
UK youth unemployment is now around 15.8–16.1%, its highest level in over a decade. That is a huge jump from the post‑pandemic low of 9.2% in 2022, and it comes at the same time as almost one million young people are now classed as NEET – not in education, employment or training.
For a government that fought the 2024 election on “opportunity” and “security” for the next generation, this is a glaring indictment.
I listened to a Labour MP interviewed on the topic this morning and he sort of acknowledged the problem but then boasted that at least Labour had increased the minimum wage for young people! Amazing. He could not joint the dots and see that an INCREASE in the minimum wage is a big factor in causing employers to employ fewer young people.
Let’s set those numbers against the EU. According to Eurostat, youth unemployment across the EU is 15.4%, and 14.9% in the eurozone. In other words, Britain under Labour is now doing worse than the European average on youth joblessness. And even that is despite not having to cope with the extremes of Southern Europe, where some countries are well above 20%. G
Germany and the Netherlands, which combine strong vocational systems with tight links between education and work, have youth unemployment rates roughly half the UK’s. Th gap is not an accident – it’s a consequence of addled socialism in action.
Rachel Reeves choices have made matters much worse. Employers openly link hiring freezes to the Chancellor’s higher employer National Insurance and rapid minimum wage hikes, both of which raise the cost of taking a chance on inexperienced staff. Instead of a serious youth‑employment strategy – targeted apprenticeships, lower hiring costs for entry‑level roles, flexible training – we have a government that prefers to virtue signal.
The result is a toxic mix: record numbers of young people shut out of work, a benefits system in flux, and a labour market where businesses are told to pay more tax and higher wages while growth stalls.
When UK youth unemployment is now higher than the EU average, a party that promised to “fix the foundations” should stop congratulating itself and start answering a basic question: why is a supposedly rich, dynamic country failing its young people so badly – and what, beyond press releases, is it going to do about it?
Silence is all we hear.
