Young people increasingly stuck in low-paid jobs

Young people are finding it increasingly harder to move out of low-paid jobs and into more lucrative work, according to a new study.

The study by the IFS, which has funded by the Alan Turing Institute, claims that recent generations of younger people have increasingly been starting their careers in low-paid occupations such as bar staff, waiters, call centre workers and kitchen assistants, despite higher education levels.

It claims that men born in each decade since the 1950s, and women born since 1985, started their careers in occupations further down the wage ladder than their predecessors.

For example, if we compare people born in the 1970s and the late 1980s: the younger generation of men were at least twice as likely to have been bar staff, kitchen and catering assistants or call centre workers in their first full-time job; and the younger generation of women were about twice as likely to have been waitresses or care workers.

And the starting position on the occupational ladder of women born in the late 1980s looked more similar to that of women born in the 1960s than to women born just slightly before them in the early 1980s. For men, the shift has been more gradual but has been going on for much longer.

‘The overall mix of jobs in the UK has changed radically over the last four decades, with highly-skilled occupations much more prevalent in the modern service-based economy than in the past,’ said IFS deputy director, Robert Joyce.

‘But, despite rising education levels, the starting occupations of young people have defied this trend. They have increasingly been concentrated on the bottom rungs of the occupational ladder. For young men, this shift has been occurring for a few decades. For young women, it represents a sharp reversal for women born since 1985.’

‘Compounding this, we also find some support for the perception that there are increasing barriers to job progression. The speed of occupational progression in the early-career years has slowed down for recent cohorts of young men (though not yet for women). Hence, compared with their predecessors, they not only started lower down the jobs ladder but also climbed it more slowly thereafter,’ added Mr Joyce.

‘These are all trends we see before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. But they help shape the impacts of that pandemic: the increased concentration of young people in hospitality, for example, has made them more vulnerable to the economic effects of social distancing. And, in turn, the pandemic threatens to exacerbate some of the concerning trends. Job progression is likely to be much harder in an uncertain economic environment with reduced hiring.’

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