The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have released the datasets for the Labour Market Overview and NEET (not in employment, education or training) data for the July-September 2020 period. The data shows that the youth unemployment rate is increasing (now at 14.6%, was 11.8% last quarter), but that there is also an increase in young people choosing to enter/stay in full-time education.

The key headlines from both datasets are recorded below:

Youth Unemployment – Labour Market Overview

• Unemployment rate for 16-24 year olds is 14.6%;
• One-third of all unemployed young people in July-September 2020, were in full time education;
• The economic inactivity rate for young people is 39.9% – nearly 80% of young people who are economically inactive are in full-time education;
• 120% increase from March 2020 to October in the number of 18-24 year olds claiming unemployment related benefits;
• Young people were more likely to be furloughed at some point between March and July 2020 – 47% of eligible jobs held by young people were furloughed at some point, compared to 29% of jobs held by those aged 25 or over.

NEET Reporting

• Lowest recorded level of NEET 16-24 year old in the UK (757,000)
  • This is partially due to a large increase in the proportion of young people in full-time education in recent quarters
• A record low of economically inactive young people who were NEET
  • 413,000 July-September 2020, down by 70,000 from July-September 2019, and down by 58,000 from April-June 2020
• However, there were more unemployed young people who had been actively seeking work within the last four weeks, and able to start within the next two weeks
  • 344,000 July-September 2020, up by 27,000 from the same period in 2019 (and up by 46,000 from April-June 2020).

See the ONS Labour Market Overview dataset analysis HERE, and the ONS NEET Reporting data analysis HERE.