The making of the 'precariat': unemployment, insecurity and work-poor young adults in harsh economic conditions.

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The key objective of this research is to undertake an analysis of existing data on youth employment to answer the research question: 'In what ways have the experiences of unemployed, insecure and vulnerable 18-25 year-olds changed between two key periods of economic instability in the UK?'. This is a timely study as levels of youth unemployment are higher now than at any time since the 1980s recession. The vulnerability of young people is not a new phenomenon: in the 1980s youth unemployment was a major cause of disquiet, leading to talk about a 'lost generation' and concerns that the experience of unemployment would leave scars on later employment careers. Pronounced changes to the structure of the youth labour market have taken place since 1980 and the experience of many young people has changed markedly. The collapse of the youth labour market, changes to the national qualification system and the significant increase in the number of young people entering higher education have all had a considerable impact on young adults' experiences of the transition from compulsory education to the labour market in c2010. As a consequence of these changes there is an increased recognition that a growing number of young people are either classified as NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) or hold insecure forms of employment, often without training, are vulnerable to losing their jobs, and move between a series of poor quality jobs. Whereas earlier approaches to the study of difficulties encountered in the transitions from education to work focused on the experience of unemployment, especially long-term unemployment, the greater complexity of transitions calls for a new approach and suggests the need for fresh understandings of vulnerability in the context of early careers. Moreover, rather than casting aside knowledge produced in earlier periods, valuable lessons can be learnt through re-analysing older data through a contemporary conceptual lens. A key aim of this study, therefore, is to capture changes in the experience of youth, highlighting the experiences in two periods of instability.This study aims to utilise data collected on the experience of young people making the transition from education to work during the 1980s recession by comparing this with data on young people experiencing the impact of the current economic downturn. The research will be based on an analysis of three pre-existing datasets. The first of these is the ESRC funded 'Understanding Society' data. This study follows approximately 100,000 individuals in 40,000 households on an annual basis and from this data it is possible to focus attention on the labour market experiences of those individuals in the age range 18-25. These young people, who were interviewed between 2009-2011 were asked a variety of questions relating to educational experiences, labour market activity and plans for the future. Two other datasets, both of which focus explicitly on youth employment in the early 1980s, will also be used. The first study, referred to as the Young Adults Study (YA), collected data through detailed interviews with 18-25 year-olds in four contrasting labour markets in 1982/83. The four areas were selected to represent a range of employment conditions and resulted in a sample of 1786 young people. The second study, referred to as the Changing Structure of Youth Labour Markets Study (CSYLM), also involved detailed interviews with 854 individuals aged 17 and 18 in 1985 in three other contrasting labour markets. The studies deliberately covered severely depressed labour markets (e.g. Liverpool and Sunderland) as well as areas that remained fairly buoyant (e.g. St Albans and Chelmsford).