Second, one-third of younger respondents who had fallen out of work during the winter 2021 lockdown have since returned to work on insecure contracts. First, one-in-three 18-24-year-old respondents (and nearly one-in-four surveyed 18-34-year-olds overall) who had been in work on the eve of Covid-19 experienced extended periods of worklessness during the pandemic, which could scar their employment and pay prospects in the longer term. It finds that, despite the welcome developments discussed above, there remain clear areas for concern. This spotlight will explore younger people’s employment trajectory during the Covid-19 pandemic, before setting out where policy makers should now be focused. Moreover, many young people were able to ‘ride out’ the economic impacts of the pandemic by entering education: the proportion of young people aged 18-24 in full-time education had increased by 3 percentage points from the pre-pandemic period, to 35 per cent (an increase of 119,000). This success is in part due to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which protected jobs throughout the pandemic, and to young people’s swift re-entry to work after social-distancing restrictions eased. In fact, the youth unemployment crisis feared by many at the start of the pandemic did not transpire: by early autumn 2021, the 18-24-year-old unemployment rate was lower than it had been just before the pandemic. Although they were disproportionately likely to lose their jobs at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, young people’s employment prospects began to improve from spring 2021.
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