On any given day, Poppy Blackman is engaged in the “soul-crushing” process of applying for a new job, and rarely ever hearing anything back.
The 22-year-old has been unemployed since January 2025 and says she applies to an average of 50 roles a month, using one of four different CVs she has written for different types of jobs and sectors.
“I can’t be picky with what I want to apply for,” says Blackman, who lives in London. She studied fashion and art design at North Kent College but has given up on only applying within this sector.
“Not a day goes by when I don’t apply for at least a few jobs,” she says. “It does get pretty miserable after a certain amount of time, always doing the same thing, looking on the same websites, applying for similar jobs. It does get a little bit soul-crushing.”
Blackman’s story is an increasingly common one. Official figures show youth unemployment among 18 to 24-year-olds rose to a five-year high in the final three months of 2025. Strip out the Covid spike in 2020 and youth unemployment has hit an 11-year-high.
On a wider net of 16 to 24-year-olds, youth unemployment is now higher than the EU average for the first time, rising to 16.1%, the highest level including the pandemic since 2014, when the jobs market was still recovering from the financial crisis.
The EU average was 14.9% in the final quarter of 2025. The youth unemployment rate compares with an overall UK unemployment level of 5.2%.
Former MP and minister Alan Milburn, chair of the government’s Young People and Work review, which is due to report in the summer, said the rise in youth unemployment posed an “existential” risk for the UK and could put “a generation on the scrapheap”.
“This is not a short-term phenomenon, it’s a long-term one,” he told the BBC. “We’re seeing something dramatic changing in the labour markets.
“Forty-five per cent of 24-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training have never had a job. If you haven’t had a job by 24, that entails a long-term scarring effect and you’re probably then stuck in a lifetime on benefits.”
Ashwin Prasad, who runs the UK arm of Tesco, recently warned that the UK was “sleepwalking into a quiet epidemic” of joblessness, with millions of people out of work and on benefits.
Some of this rise in joblessness is due to businesses looking to shore up costs in tougher times.
Martin Beck, chief economist at WPI Strategy, said: “The economy has been sluggish for a long time and that tends to hit younger people first, because if you’re an employer and your demand is weak, you’re probably going to freeze recruitment. You’re not going to open up as many entry-level roles.”
Economists say that while there are a number of issues contributing to the rise in young people being out of work, one big factor has been rising costs for employers.
In her first budget after Labour returned to power in 2024, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, increased the rate of employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) from 13.8% to 15% from last April. The threshold for NICs being levied was also cut from £9,100 to £5,000 a year.
The national minimum wage has also risen every year since 2019, rising by 6.7% in 2025 and by 4.1% in April 2026.
From April, the combined cost of employing someone age 21 and over will have risen by 15% since 2024, according to the Centre for Policy Studies, or £3,414. For 18 to 20-year-olds, the increase is 26%, or £4,095.
The Employment Rights Act has also added to costs for employers, with significant new rights for workers on sick pay, parental leave and zero-hours contracts.
Simon French, chief economist at Panmure Liberum, an investment bank, said: “The ‘national living wage’ is probably the most significant factor over the last decade in terms of its impact on youth unemployment.
“But if you then layer on top of that the employer national insurance changes, plus the Employment Rights Act, on top of pensions auto-enrolment – that is a lot to absorb.
“We’ve had these incremental costs being burdened on employers as if it is just a free lunch. Well, I think we’re finding, it’s not a free lunch.”
It has all left young people facing a brutal jobs market. Jack, 21, lives in London and graduated from Oxford University last summer with a first in history.
He has since applied for more than 100 jobs, graduate schemes and internships and – despite landing his first internship, which started in January and runs for three months – he is now on the job hunt again.
He says the application process is gruelling, made harder because of the prevalent use of technology in hiring.
“You hear back from maybe 10% of applications and usually it’s automated, so you don’t even know what you’re doing wrong,” he says. “I’ve spoken to one human out of all those applications. I’ve even been interviewed by chatbots.”
He feels trapped in what he describes as a catch-22. “Entry-level roles want you to already have a foot in the door. The roles in which you begin your career require you to have already been in roles in which you begin your career. It’s a classic case of the chicken and the egg,” he says. “I feel pretty drained and fed up.”
Many graduates also say they are worried about companies using artificial intelligence to replace jobs. However, Jake Finney, senior economist at PwC, said its youth employment index for 2025 found AI was not a big factor.
“We didn’t really find much of an impact at the economy-wide level, because ultimately, young people are concentrated in industries like retail and hospitality and these are not the sectors that have been hit by AI so far.
“But if you look at the IT sector, which is obviously the sector that’s been most impacted by AI and automation so far, we’ve found that adult employment has been relatively stable, whereas youth employment has dropped by around a fifth.”
Jonathan Townsend, UK chief executive of The King’s Trust, which helps young people find work, said: “More young people are coming to us eager to work but feeling locked out of opportunities.
“This generation has faced a uniquely difficult start to working life. Many had their education and early work experiences disrupted by the pandemic, leaving gaps in skills, confidence and networks that are crucial for getting a first job.”
Saalim Elhaj, 23, has decided to learn new skills to find a job. He graduated with an architecture degree in Manchester in June 2025. He moved to Southampton to be with his girlfriend and has mostly been unemployed apart from days labouring on construction sites. He no longer sees himself pursuing a career in architecture.
“Even before finishing my course, I was quite disillusioned by the whole profession, but mostly by the economy,” he says.
“I could see it wasn’t going to get any better. There weren’t many jobs for recent graduates. Even the year before I graduated, I could see it was stagnating. I was really confused about what I’m supposed to be doing in this economy.”
After contacting some architecture companies and seeing how few jobs there were for recent graduates, he decided to expand his skillset and get experience in construction.
He is now hoping he can do an apprenticeship in timber framing, a traditional method of building using heavy timber – if he can find someone to take him on. In the meantime, he regularly travels to London to volunteer with a timber framer so he can learn as much as he can.
“It’s really bizarre, doing a university degree and now thinking about an apprenticeship, but everything is very uncertain and I really want to learn a skill.”
Julie Leonard, chief impact officer at Shaw Trust, a national employment charity, said: “This generation has had a raw deal. They’ve faced a pandemic during the time when vital skills for the workplace are gained, and are starting their working lives during unprecedented social and technological change.”
