Youth unemployment

Data on the percentage of 16 to 24 year olds who were unemployed in the UK from 2014 to 2021.

Summary main findings
By year
By area
About the data
Download the data

Summary main findings

The youth unemployment rate was 13% in 2021, having gone up to nearly 16% in 2020.

By year

Percentage of 16 to 24 year olds who were unemployed (UK, 2014 to 2021)

Percentage of 16 to 24 year olds who were unemployed (UK, 2014 to 2021)
Year	Percentage (%)
2021	13.1
2020	15.9
2019	13.1
2018	12.3
2017	13.2
2016	14.3
2015	15.3
2014	17.5

For the full download file, see Download the data.

By area

Percentage of 16 to 24 year olds who were unemployed, by region (UK, 2018 to 2021 combined)

41 regions in the UK are ranked from the lowest to highest percentages. They are then divided into 5 equally-sized groups (‘quintiles’), from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest).

The regional estimates have a large margin of error – do not rank or compare specific regions.

The lines either side of the dots represent confidence intervals – the range of values that the 'true' value for each region is highly likely to be within. In many cases the confidence intervals overlap. This suggests differences between specific regions may not be statistically significant.

See the composite indices for more precise estimates and to understand overall regional patterns.

Q1 - Lowest 20%

Q5 - Highest 20%

Percentage of 16 to 24 year olds who were unemployed, by region (UK, 2018 to 2021 combined)
Region	Percentage (%)
Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire	12.4
Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire	11.8
Cheshire	10.8
Cornwall and Isles of Scilly	12.6
Cumbria	10.9
Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire	16.0
Devon	12.2
Dorset and Somerset	11.7
East Anglia	13.8
East Wales	14.3
East Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire	18.5
Eastern Scotland	12.2
Essex	10.7
Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Bath/Bristol area	10.5
Greater Manchester	18.9
Hampshire and Isle of Wight	12.7
Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire	10.9
Highlands and Islands	4.2
Inner London - East	24.5
Inner London - West	24.3
Kent	14.9
Lancashire	11.7
Leicestershire, Rutland and Northamptonshire	15.7
Lincolnshire	13.5
Merseyside	11.5
North Eastern Scotland	13.1
North Yorkshire	10.4
Northern Ireland	9.5
Northumberland and Tyne and Wear	15.7
Outer London - East and North East	18.2
Outer London - South	23.0
Outer London - West and North West	21.7
Shropshire and Staffordshire	13.3
South Yorkshire	12.8
Southern Scotland	15.0
Surrey, East and West Sussex	11.5
Tees Valley and Durham	15.8
West Central Scotland	10.6
West Midlands	17.4
West Wales and The Valleys	12.6
West Yorkshire	15.7

For the full download file, see Download the data.

About the data

Data source

Office for National Statistics, Labour Force Survey (LFS)

Time period

2014 to 2021

Geographic area

What the data measures

The data shows unemployment rates for 16 to 24 year olds in the UK.

Unemployment is measured as the percentage of economically active 16 to 24 year olds who are currently out of work but looking for a job.

Rates are rounded to 1 decimal place.

Things you need to know

The data does not include people who are economically inactive because they are either:

in full-time education
looking after the home
permanently sick or disabled

Data is weighted using LFS probability weights.

The error bars show 95% confidence intervals. These intervals show where we expect the true value from a population to be 95% of the time. For example, a confidence interval with the range of values from 5 to 10 implies that there is a 95% chance that the true population value is between 5 and 10, and a 5% chance that it is outside of this range. The narrower the confidence interval or range, the more precise the estimate. Read more about confidence intervals

Type of data

Survey data, weighted

Full report

Download the data

Download full dataset (CSV, 7KB)

This file contains the following variables:

Indicator code
Indicator name
Area type
Area code
Area name
Time period
Socio-economic background
Sex
Value
Sample size
Lower confidence interval
Upper confidence interval
Standard error
Unit

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