Young enter a postcode lottery as the jobs crisis deepens

For a brief moment it seemed like there was rare piece of good news.

When the Office for National Statistics yesterday revealed the latest jobs figures, the top line was unemployment had fallen by 65,000 to 2.58m in the three months to May.

However, a closer look at the numbers showed Yorkshire and the Humber hadn’t fared so well. In fact across the region the jobless total was up from 9.3 per cent to 9.7 per cent.

It might seem like a small rise, but every fraction of a per cent means hundreds more out of work.

In recent years it has been young people who have born the brunt of the increasingly competitive jobs market. Fresh out of school or university, many have found themselves caught in a catch-22 situation. They need experience if they are to turn the heads of potential employers, but with sparse CVs, few are willing to give them a go when there are a dozen other applicants, all over qualified and desperate for work.

To assess just how bad the situation is, a new website has just been launched which provides a snapshot of how 18-year-olds across England are faring based on where they live.

Simply by tapping in a postcode, the website produces a pie chart of expectations for the average teenager in that particular area, from their training prospects to their chances of being unemployed.

Some of the results won’t come as a surprise. For those teenagers currently living in the centre of York the outlook is good. They have a much better chance of going to university than many of their peers, unemployment is low and training opportunities are high. Similarly teenagers in Harrogate are seven times as likely to secure a place at an elite university, such as Oxford or Cambridge, than those teenagers who happen to live just 20 miles away in Bradford.

It’s much the same picture in Dewsbury, where the website shows the percentage of 18-year-olds studying at university is significantly less than the national average.

Launched by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, the site has been based on research carried out at the University of Sheffield and their colleagues in Brighton.

“There are huge inequalities between young people’s life chances that increasingly depend on where they are born,” says Danny Dorling, professor of human geography at Sheffield, who helped develop the website. “These inequalities are currently growing and this website helps highlight the stark contrast between what young people in different parts of England are most likely to be doing at the age of 18.

“With new statistics revealing that nationally the proportion of 16 to 18-year-olds not in education, employment or training has risen by eight per cent, we need to understand how young people’s chances are influenced by their postcode.”

Teenagers in areas like Harehills in Leeds fare particularly badly. While a third less are in full-time employment than the national average, they are also twice as likely to be unemployed.

The launch of the website, which is funded by the Nominet Trust, comes after the CBI called for a number of new measures to improve the Government’s controversial Work Programme.

Earlier this year, experts suggested ministers had vastly overestimated the number of youngsters who would find through the scheme and questioned whether the £63m which has been spent terminating existing welfare to work contracts will be money well spent. With a further study from the think tank IPPR confirming that far from turning a corner, unemployment in the north of England has increased by 100,000 in the last year, those behind the website are also hoping it will help people campaign for a fairer deal.

“People can not only find their own personal breakdown when it comes to education and training, but they can also share the results through things like Twitter and Facebook,” says Richard Garside, director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.

“We are taught that life is what you make it, that the able will succeed regardless of background.

“However, this website shows that where you are born and where you grow up has a huge influence on where you grow up.

“What we hope is that the information on the website will help young people and their families to lobby their MPs to challenge the postcode lottery.”

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To view the website go to www.comparefutures.org