{"id":592311,"date":"2026-05-19T11:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T11:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/592311\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T11:00:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T11:00:16","slug":"uk-unemployment-rate-unexpectedly-rises-to-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/592311\/","title":{"rendered":"UK unemployment rate unexpectedly rises to 5%"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A higher unemployment rate means more people are out of work and looking for work, while a fall in the number of job vacancies means there are fewer jobs to compete for.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ben Harrison, director of the Work Foundation at Lancaster University, said this was making life &#8220;particularly difficult&#8221; for young people as the youth unemployment rate has reached 14.7%, its highest since late 2014.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Separate research published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies on Tuesday shows the current fall in youth employment rates is approaching the level of decline seen during the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The IFS data relates to a different time period to the latest jobs and wages data.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It suggests between December 2022 and December 2025, the proportion of 16 to 24-year-olds in payrolled work fell from 54.9% to 50.6%.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jed Michael, a research economist at the IFS, said the current trend was concerning because &#8220;we know that unemployment early in one&#8217;s career can have lasting negative consequences&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jonathan Townsend, UK chief executive of the The King&#8217;s Trust charity, said the IFS&#8217;s research indicated that &#8220;we cannot simply assume the problem will correct itself as economic conditions improve.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We urgently need to understand what is pulling more young people away from work and education, including the role of mental health.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A higher unemployment rate means more people are out of work and looking for work, while a fall&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-592311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}