Young people in the UK have it tough

[JiIttiIg]

All the news stories are about young people not getting jobs and having to stay with their parents. It used to be they had to stay at home to save for a house, now it's no house and no jobs. Can't see things getting any better in the near future. Is the UK now a country that is failing it's young people. Is it going to be like countries from Eastern or Southern Europe where young people had to outmigrate in order to get a decent life? Can't see any politicians having the right answers.

Both 16 year old DS and I recently attended courses in the construction building of our local college, and it was buzzing. According to my course leader it "keeps the rest of the college afloat financially".

This echoes an article I read recently in the Grauniad about a college in Birmingham I think- similarly, a buzzing construction trades department. The bottleneck they identified was employers (and in construction they're usually small businesses) being unwilling to take apprentices on.

Poor DS had actually been doing an engineering GCSE in this building. He was really hoping to get an apprenticeship with one of the big employers in this area but these apprenticeships are very sought after. Both employers seemed to be taking on less apprentices than usual this year. Nevertheless, he got into the final 5 candidates for one, and- given that we heard that they were taking on 5 apprentices- we were very hopeful. After a long agonising wait, they finally informed him that they'd decided to only take 3 this year, and he hadn't made the final cut. 😪 I'm actually very proud of his response- he's taken it on the chin, says he'll try again next year, and will fall back on his plan B, which is studying engineering at college.

They go and work for the smaller businesses who actually pay tax to the government

The vast majority of economists agree that the UK economy is around 8% smaller than it would be if we hadn’t left our closest and largest trading partner

Nonsense - the vast majority of economists haven't even studied the figures or published peer reviews. Even the OBR's assumption (4%) is an average taken from around twelve external studies - indicating that other estimates were somewhat lower than 4%.

So, still smaller then?

Yes, there is a bottleneck there, I agree. We’re seeing more projects put on hold across the board (contractors won’t fix prices because of the Iran situation, clients can’t accept open tenders because of budgets etc) so right now the smaller companies are holding off. We are seeing some movement so finger crossed it will be soon. But that aside, there is still a shortage so hopefully he will find something soon. There is also a huge shortage of engineers so I’m confident his career path will be there for him. Glad he is keeping his chin up.

Not necessarily - the studies used by the OBR mostly estimated that immigration would be much lower than it is. Also, whilst it is now recognised that Brexit- uncertainty caused problems, that's mostly diminished.

I hope so, it was me that advised him to go into engineering for that reason! 😳 And he is still quite young...I imagine the final places may have gone to 18 year olds . But the company he nearly got a place with has just lost a big contract apparently.

(The other one's doing fine....it makes things for the global super rich, ironically. But there was even more competition for apprenticeships there- 500 kids turned up at the information evening- for 12 places. Perhaps they should put a 0.01% levy on the price of their products to pay for more apprentices?? I know I know, that's crazy socialist talk)

Please don't kid yourself. A plumbers labourer is not a completely unskilled roll. A lot of the time they'll be plumbers who never completed their final qualifications for whatever reason.

Also construction labourers carry all sorts of plant qualifications too, they might be classed as a labourer but you ain't walking onto a site as a labourer without a CSCS card and then they'll be asking what plant tickets have you got?

Yes, necessarily. The economy is provably performing less well than it would have done if we remained in the EU. By every metric.

Denying this is the largest part of the problem. Pointing different directions to give other reasons is not helping. Those who ripped us out of the EU said they had a plan, they said we’d have control of our borders. Net migration rocketed. They said we’d have £350 billion more to spend. Even if you exclude the impact of covid, the deficit has grown. They said we’d have new trade deals. So far the ones which have materialised are crap. When U.K. farmers raised concerns about Australian imports, the response was “they don’t meet current quotas anyway, they’ll never meet the new ones”. At best it may increase U.K. GDP by 0.08% but hey, we get TimTams.

Until those who support Brexit accept it hasn’t been good for us, and get on board with those who are trying to rectify it, Britain will never recover.

Nearly 80,000 British citizens travelled to Australia on youth mobility visas in 2024. We have youth mobility deals with New Zealand and Canada, plus British citizens can also move to Ireland.

[2024] was the first time young Brits were no longer required to work and live in regional Australia to extend their stay. The number of visas issued to working holidaymakers from the UK soared from 47,000 in 2023-34 to a record 79,000 in 2024-25.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/british-backpackers-head-australia-record-36317351

The economy is provably performing less well than it would have done if we remained in the EU. By every metric.

How can it be provable? A UK still in the EU (after Covid/Ukraine/Trump's tariffs...) does not exist. From the Julian Jessop link up thread;

The NBER paper assumed any underperformance must have been due to Brexit...

The paper essentially uses two approaches. One is to compare the performance of the UK to some average of a very large group of other economies with whom it may have little in common.

The other approach is to leave the judgement entirely to a computer programme. Synthetic control models use an algorithm to find the weighted group of countries (or ‘doppelgänger’) whose performance was closest to that of the UK before Brexit. This control group can be a very odd bunch. Indeed, here are the weights in the NBER doppelgänger: US 61.4%, Estonia 10.9%, Greece 9.5%, Italy 6.7%, Ireland 4.4%, Latvia 3.4%, Iceland 3.0% and Hungary 0.7%.

None of these are obvious benchmarks for the UK. Where, in particular, are Germany and France?

More fundamentally, the best fit in one period and in one set of circumstances may not be the best in another, especially where there have been many shocks (not just Brexit) which could be expected to hit the UK differently from other countries (notably Covid and the energy crisis).

I have therefore done my own version of the NBER chart. This confirms that the real outlier over this period was the US. In per capita GDP terms, the UK has marginally underperformed France and marginally outperformed Germany, which are more obvious benchmarks.

When U.K. farmers raised concerns about Australian imports

How would British farmers feel about the EU's Mercosur trade deal?

Jan 2026
Thousands of Irish farmers protest against EU-Mercosur trade deal.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/10/thousands-of-irish-farmers-protest-against-eu-mercosur-trade-deal

BoredZelda
The charge out rate for a plumber’s labourer is £30/ph. This is the person who holds the ladder and fetches things from the van. That equals an annual amount of £58,500 per year for unskilled labour.

Presumably that charge out rate accounts for your agency commission/profit, national insurance, pension, holiday pay, liability etc. Perhaps even a lodging allowance for a major project. Do the labourers require construction skills certification?

it was only in 2004 when we began to see more European labour coming in to the country that rates paired back to where they had been previously. This remained the same for another couple of decades until Brexit happened and here we are again.

I remember reading a report that as many as 500 Romanian men were victims of modern slavery, hired out by just one gang - largely supplying workers for construction sites in London and the southeast between 2009 and 2018. The men were being paid less than £2 per hour and living in squalid conditions.

Julian Jessop convinces nobody, his bias is in neon lights. On the other hand:

Considering all of the evidence, the consensus view – that Brexit’s economic impact would be negative andlarge – has been borne out. The 2019-2024 parliament raised taxes by around £100 billion, and if we take the OBR’s 4 per cent loss of productivity to be the true figure, £40 billion of those tax rises were needed because of EU withdrawal.

https://consoc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/The-Economic-Impact-of-Brexit.pdf

That’s the equivalent of someone modestly overweight being concerned about their health and someone with stage 4 colon cancer telling them not to worry.

Not everything is a race to the bottom.

Julian Jessop convinces nobody, his bias is in neon lights. On the other hand

From your link -

A note on authorship

John Springford is an associate fellow at the Centre for European Reform in London.

I've found the Centre for European Reform here;

The Centre for European Reform is a think-tank devoted to making the European Union work better and strengthening its role in the world.

https://www.cer.eu/about

His bias is in neon lights.

So? They cant work in the EU

@Clavinova, you've been here for years trying to bamboozle us all with your long cut and paste right wing posts.

Your perseverance is to be admired, even if your views aren't.

Ireland is in the EU. They can work elsewhere in the EU if they have a visa, although one thing that Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have in common is language. Similarly, I know several young Brits working or studying in the United States.

Well, it all depends on the meaning of tough and I know it's relative but also practical in living within your means.

Back in the day it was genuinely tough, especially with rations, you worked for a pittance to be able to feed your family, absolutely luxuries or treats.

Now, no matter the circumstances, we can eat, have a roof over our heads, but the relative 'poor' is not being able to afford a big screen, wifi, just basic technology which is a daily 'necessity' and not not food, heat etc.

Most of us can manage the basic needs, but for younger generations it is indeed becoming harder to live by these old rules due to the necessity of paying for technology, which comes with expectations of moving into high spec accommodation.

To go back to the old days, we would pay rent for the most basic accommodation, but our kids won't. Sign of the times
Xx

Tough in the sense of their just isn't enough decent jobs.
When you hear of teachers only being able to get a couple of days supply work and supplementing with pub work.

I even know people with Engineering degrees and not a proper job 2/3 years after graduating.

Actually I only know one young person who's graduated post covid and got a proper job.

That stuff holds people back its not about having a big telly, it not getting secure work to get a mortgage to get a house.

No proper job, no mortgage, not being able to move forward and get married or have kids.

Yes it's tougher now to get a job due to so much competition, young people having more qualifications. As graduates we would take any job going and volunteer to places to get a foot in the door, it wasn't easy easy, we had to be pro active.

People keep saying this but I don't understand. Why wouldn't they be able to get a visa for an EU country?

That's the issue a toe in the door isn't really pushing the door open.
Teachers only able to get a couple of days a week teaching - using the pub to supplement that.
I know someone else with one day a week in a semi-relavant job - and the pub.

Along with others who are struggling to get relevant jobs, degrees in engineering that you wouldn't have thought would have struggled

These young people all graduated who've been graduated 2/3 years ago still not able to get a full-time graduate level job.

It might be easier in parts of England but not in Scotland

Language?
If your a German, French or Italian employer whats going to make you want to take a UK graduate who struggles to communicate in the countries language verses a local graduate?

@Newname26 OK, I see. That has always been an issue though and has nothing to do with Brexit. (The poster I was quoting was arguing about Brexit.)