This paper uses official data, and the research conducted by policy think tanks and independent research organizations,
to chart the experiences of Britain’s COVID cohort
who either spent the final year of their full-time education and/or
their first year in the labour market wholly or partly under the pandemic
lockdowns which began in March 2020 and continued, with interruptions, until July 2021. The data show that government’s “no detriment” policies protected students from facing crucial examinations, and employees already in jobs were protected
through furloughing. New entrants to the labour market were relatively
unprotected. Yet despite the economic turbulence induced by the pandemic,
lockdowns, followed by a “hard” Brexit at the end of 2020, rises in youth unemployment were confined to
students seeking part-time jobs, and among them to particularly
vulnerable groups, namely the least qualified and non-white ethnic minorities.
However, it is argued that this success was at the cost of exacerbating ongoing
trends with generally unwelcome consequences, specifically an increase in the
number of higher education graduates entering jobs for which they are
over-qualified, and an enlarged tail-end of low achievers who are at risk of
becoming trapped in low-paid precarious work.
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