What Does the Employment Rights Bill Mean for Our Young People?

The Government’s new Employment Rights Bill aims to secure better conditions for UK workers – but how will it impact young people?

This week, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released their latest labour market data, highlighting the pressing need of tackling youth unemployment. The data shows that 13.6% of young people are unemployed and the number of young people in long-term unemployment has increased by 30,600 (53%) over the past year. Young people are now more than three times as likely to be unemployed than any other age group.

In our 2024 Youth Voice Census report, we heard that accessing good quality work locally and having access to fair pay is important to young people. However, our data shows that half of young people (50%) said that travel/location was one of their biggest barriers to work. Nearly 3 in 10 (27%) young people in work disagree that they are paid fairly for the work they do. In addition, 15% of respondents indicate that flexible working has decreased in the last 12 months. It has been well established that young people want to work; they want good terms of employment with pay above minimum wage, flexibility, and stable contracts. Yet, over the last seven years, our census data shows that accessing good quality work is a challenge.