Jobless youths facing a bleak future, says report

A generation of young people in Britain face a bleak future due to the high rates of youth unemployment, a new report has warned.

The study, by Lancaster University’s Work Foundation said that even cities which have the lowest rates of youth unemployment boast an unemployment rate that is a third higher than Germany’s national average.

Looking at rates across 53 of the country’s largest towns and cities, it found the North-east had the highest youth unemployment with over one in four (27 per cent) of economically active young people unemployed – in the South-west it was 17 per cent.

Ten towns and cities, which included Barnsley, Glasgow, Grimsby, Coventry, Bradford, Hull, Plymouth, Middlesbrough and Stockton, Doncaster and Birmingham, were also ranked as youth unemployment “black spots”, with jobless rates at more than 25 per cent. Most of these cities previously relied on traditional industries for jobs and growth. The statistics do not include those in full-time education.

In other cities and towns such as Southampton, York, Aberdeen, Cambridge and Reading and Bracknell, the rate of youth unemployment was roughly halved to less than 13 per cent.

However, even these rates were still a third higher than the German national average of 8.6 per cent and double that of its best-performing cities, like Hamburg where youth unemployment is 5 per cent.