It is estimated that more than a million young people are now unemployed in Britain. The figures have been swollen by the number of graduates and school-leavers who have failed to find work after joining the jobs market this summer.
Unemployment rose by 80,000 to reach 2.51 million in the three months to July, 77,000 of whom were 18 to 24-year-olds, lifting the youth joblessness total to 973,000. But new figures taking into account the last three months are expected to see the number of unemployed youth rise above the million mark.
Howard Archer of consultancy IHS Global Insight said this week's figures were likely to show a 90,000 increase, pushing the total number of people out of work to 2.6 million and pushing the number of unemployed young people above 1 million. It is already known that the number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance in August rose by 20,300. Archer said: "The worry is that, having shown impressive resilience earlier this year, the labour market is increasingly buckling under serious pressure from weak economic activity."
The figures come at a time when there are growing concerns among graduates that they are being forced into providing their labour for free through internships and work experience programmes as employers exploit the huge and growing pool of unemployed young people desperate for a way into the graduate jobs market.
Ben Lyons, of Intern Aware, a group campaigning for young people to be paid fairly, said the problem of corporations exploiting young people through unpaid internships was escalating. "Corporations are finding it easier than ever to exploit desperation and aspiration to get labour for free," he said. "It is wrong for people to have to work for free, and it is wrong that the only people who can do this work are those with savings or sources of money of their own. It is wrong and it is stupid because employers are restricting the market of people from which they choose their employees. Things need to change."
