Friday 20 November 2015

The impact of youth unemployment on adult employment trajectories

Dr Stefan Speckesser and Vahe Nafilyan, from the Institute for Employment Studies, look at patterns of young people's movement into and within the labour market over the last 40 years



Long-term trends and effects of the economic cycle


In a recent project for the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, we examined how the transitions of young people to and within the labour market have changed over the last four decades.[1] These changes were analysed for all people in the UK born between 1959 and 1997 with descriptions of some broad trends in the labour market and education activity using all available years of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) from 1975 until 2013.

Our video below shows how much education participation and patterns of entry to the labour markets have changed in the UK since the 1970s. It shows both the continuing trend of education expansion as well as effects of the economic cycle, resulting in varied initial labour market transitions and potential impacts on adult employment trajectories for different cohorts.