This report by the Resolution Foundation explores the prevalence of youth worklessness due to ill health in different parts of the UK. It finds that economic inactivity due to ill health among 18-24 year-olds has nearly doubled over the past decade, and is heavily concentrated among those with low levels of skills, with four-in-five young people who are too ill to work having only qualifications at GCSE-level or below.
The research shows that rates of youth worklessness due to ill health vary little between more and less deprived areas of the UK. This is in contrast to inactivity due to ill health across the population as a whole, which is concentrated in deprived areas.
Rather, young people living in major cities are the least likely to be workless because they are unwell. In 2020-2022, for example, 1.8 per cent of 18-24-year-olds in London, and 2.0 per cent of 18-24-year-olds in other core cities like Glasgow and Liverpool (both of which have significant levels of deprivation), were not working due to ill health.
In contrast, 3.4 per cent of 18-24-year-olds living in places dominated by small towns or villages, such as Derbyshire, Devon and South Wales, were inactive due to ill-health.
This picture can be explained in large part by the fact that many young people relocate from smaller places to big cities, firstly to study, and later to take up graduate jobs – changing the overall makeup of the population in these cities to one with a high share of students and graduates.