The latest labour market information continues to show the severity of the pandemic on economic performance, including a particularly severe impact on younger people.
The new COVID-19 Adjusted Measure of Unemployment indicates a rate of 41.2% for those aged 15 to 24 years and 13.7% for those aged 25 to 74 years, reflecting the typically higher proportion of younger employees in the sectors that are last to re-open and hardest hit by the lockdown. It is crucial that these ‘temporary’ unemployed don’t become permanently so. The various measures in the July stimulus aimed at getting us back into the consumption patterns aim to ensure there are jobs to return to for those currently unemployed.
There are nervous times ahead as we wait and see how the economy performs over the coming months.
