THE male youngsters WITHOUT JOBS
The number of young men not in full-time education or in work has risen for the first time since 2012
THE number of unemployed young men rose last year - after a long period of decline.
Those are the findings of new labour market analysis that explored employment trends in the UK between the months of April and June 2019.
The analysis looked at the employment activity of young people not in full-time education who were aged between 16 and 24.
Some 223,000 of males in this age range - or 12.6 per cent - were found to be unemployed.
That was up from
11.3 per cent the year before (or 199,000 men) and comes after a long-term trend that had been one of huge improvement.
The analysis went back as far as April-June 2009.
That year, 21.0 per cent of men aged 16-24 (or 419,000) who weren’t in fulltime education were unemployed.
The situation was worst in April-June 2012 (23.2 per cent) but has trended steeply downwards since then.
The situation slightly worsened for females, too.
There were 132,000 unemployed females aged 16-24 who weren’t in fulltime education as of April-June this year - or 8.7 per cent of that demographic.
That was up from 127,000 the year before, or 8.5 per cent of females aged 16-24.
Campaigners said there was not much information to explain why the unemployment rate had risen more rapidly for males than females.
A spokesperson from Youth Unemployment said: “There are all kinds of explanations that describe the situation at a macro level but not in specific detail that could tie this together.
“For example, the rate of criminality is disproportionately higher in young males than any other demographic.
“The consequences of youth unemployment are wide-ranging.
“Employers are reporting skills shortages specifically linked to the types of traits one would obtain through experience in work such as confidence, management and leadership.
“So the longer a young person is kept out of the workforce, the less likely it is they will obtain the confidence and other soft skills that would make them desirable to employers.”
Separate figures from the Youth Voice Census Report 2019 revealed that 29% of all NEET youngsters thought employers were either “very unsupportive” or “unsupportive” of hiring young people.