Britain’s young people need more than Sunak’s Kickstart as pandemic lays waste to jobs

Even with the furlough scheme, unemployment is rising rapidly and the young are getting hit hardest, writes James Moore

Unemployment among the under-25s has rocketed during the pandemic (EPA)

The pandemic may have delivered an unprecedented economic shock, but its chief victims are the same as in every previous “black swan” event: ethnic minorities, disabled people, women and the young. 

The devastating impact on the last of those groups was made clear in the latest batch of figures from the Office for National Statistics. 

They showed that unemployment between October and December increased to 5.1 per cent, a five-year high. About 1.74 million people were out of work – a rise of 454,000 compared with the same period in 2019.