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harvey9last Friday at 9:16 PM1 replyview on HN

The post you replied to specified young people so 70M is the wrong denominator. The UK currently has far more than 1 million working age adults unemployed and the denominator for that is still less than 70M because Britain has plenty of retirement age adults too.


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robotresearcherlast Friday at 9:49 PM

I chose the denominator of a society of 70 million to match the data link I posted.

It’s possible the unemployment rate among you adults is historically high, but I haven’t seen data on that. I doubt it, based on the overall unemployment rate.

edit: looked up the current data. Age 16-24 unemployment excluding trainees and students is 12.8% which is about double the current overall unemployment rate. Haven't found historical data on this cohort yet. We might expect youngsters to be less employed than experienced people, but double does seem high on the face of it.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05...

edit 2:

Found it. Youth unemployment is currently at about the (eyeball) median rate for the last 32 years.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotin...

I think it's important to put numbers in historical context when saying or implying that we're in some kind of crisis.

Youth unemployment sucks for the people involved and the people around them. Every one of them has my sympathy. We are not in a period of unusually high youth unemployment, according to the UK government data.

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