Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2016-09-06.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the finding of the Ernst & Young study on the employment landscape for young people in the UK that there are significant variations in youth unemployment rates across different regions of the UK.

Lord Freud

Nationally, nearly 86% of young people are either working or in full-time education. Since 2010, the proportion of young people who have left full-time education and are unemployed has fallen to 5.8%, close to the lowest on record. There is always some regional variation, but youth unemployment rates exaggerate this because they are affected by the varying proportion of young people in full-time education. Looking at young people claiming unemployment benefits, which excludes full-time students, the variation between regions is narrower than in 2010, with the West Midlands, Yorkshire & Humberside and the North East having seen the largest falls.