Risk-averse young workers don’t copy Dick Whittington
STRIKING out to seek your fortune in London has long been a rite of passage for ambitious young people.
But the path trodden by Dick Whittington could be under threat as riskaverse young graduates increasingly stay at home instead of taking a chance on a move to the big city.
A report by the Resolution Foundation found that the proportion of graduates moving for a job each year has almost halved from 1.8 per cent to 1 per cent since 2001.
The proportion of under-35s moving regions and changing jobs has fallen by 20 per cent in the same period.
The findings also suggest that the net number of graduates moving to London could be as much as 10 times lower than it was in the Nineties.
“Around 38,000 more graduates moved to the capital between 1996 and 1999 than left the city, far higher than the 4,000 net movement to London between 2013 and 2016,” the think tank said. “This appears to be driven primarily by fewer people moving to the capital.”
Stephen Clarke, a policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation and the report’s author, said the trend was partly the result of a more risk-averse attitude.
A “scarring effect” – the result of coming of age during the financial crisis – and a “greater awareness of the risks of unemployment” meant even the most skilled young people were unwilling to move around to look for a job, he said.
Brian Robson, policy and research manager at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said the figures also reflected graduates being priced out of the capital. Data suggests that the number of graduates leaving London is up by 14 per cent while the number moving to the city has risen by only 3 per cent.
Mr Clarke added that some of the decline could be explained by high house prices in London, as many were still moving into the South East and could be commuting into the capital. “If we know that the attraction of the South East is not diminished for graduates but London is, as a place to live, then that makes house prices the obvious answer,” he said.