'Lost generation' fears as 1m youths go jobless

Unemployment in Britain has surged by 49,000 to nearly 2.5 million, including one in every five young people - putting the number of 16- to 24-year-olds out of work at close to a million, the highest since records were first kept in 1992.

The rate of joblessness among the young is now 20.3 per cent - 2 times the rate among the population as a whole.

The reasons young people are suffering are complex, and reflected across Europe. During recessions, employers are more likely to hire trained staff who are immediately productive.

Young people also face competition from inexpensive and highly qualified workers from Eastern Europe, while graduates have been taking school leavers' jobs they would not have usually considered. Older people are retiring later, limiting vacancies.

Hundreds of thousands more young people are thought to be in "hidden" unemployment, classifying themselves as students.

Other key measures gave a bleak picture, with the number of people in work falling by 69,000 to 29.1 million. The employment rate fell to 70.4 per cent, down 0.3 per cent.

Most economists believe the jobless rate will gradually increase as spending cuts result in redundancies in the public sector.

The overall jobless claimant count defied expectations to fall by 4100 to 1.46 million.

Brendan Barber, general-secretary of the Trades Union Council, said: "While champagne corks are popping in the City, young people in the UK are being left to pick up the cost of a recession they didn't cause."

A spokesman for youth charity The Prince's Trust said: "Unemployment has a knock-on effect on a young person's self-esteem, their emotional stability and overall well-being. The longer the period a young person is unemployed, the more likely they are to experience this psychological scarring."

Some economists did at least see some signs within the figures that things are not as bad as they could have been. Philip Shaw, an economist at Investec, said: "Unemployment is broadly flattish, in line with expectations."

But he warned there were no easy solutions. "More apprenticeships may be a good solution in future but, longer term, the only real answer is to encourage better literacy and numeracy at schools."

- INDEPENDENT