Youth economic activity and health (YEAH) monitor

This project will address the UK's need for robust evidence on the pandemic's consequences for youth employment, learning and psycho-social well-being. It will comprise five related work packages: Transitions, Career Planning, Internships, Training, and Employment Initiatives. Using longitudinal quantitative and qualitative methods, we will examine successful transitions from school into jobs and post-18 education; investigate the association of future optimism and career planning with youth well-being; analyse the consequences of the emergency on internship provision and training, and track local employment support provision and careers education initiatives. To contextualise British trends and to illuminate the potential for policy initiatives and the broader role of institutions, we will compare changes in youths' job market transitions and career planning in the UK with detailed findings for Germany. We will commission a survey of 16-24-year-olds in Britain, conduct qualitative interviews with local labour market stakeholders, analyse a range of secondary labour market data. The project will address social inequalities in the epidemic's impact and assess varying prospects for recovery among places and socio-economic groups defined by age, gender, region, ethnicity, educational attainment and job skills. This study will generate intelligence to facilitate urgent, evidence-informed decision making. Taken together the research will illuminate how future career planning, job-related skills acquisition and local employment support initiatives can come together to help (especially vulnerable) young people to maintain employment, get back to work, and develop productive skills. In so doing, it will examine potential mechanisms to avoid long-term 'scarring' effects for careers and lifetime earnings.