As Burnham promises to end neoliberalism, young people facing soaring rents, mounting debt and insecure work are likely to be left wondering whether this Budget offers meaningful change.
Banseka Kayembe
Extortionate university tuition fees, stagnant wages, sky high rents, an increasingly shrinking job market- it’s not easy being young in Britain right now. The socio-economic contract promises that if you work hard you’ll achieve all the traditional milestones of adulthood: reliable employment, home ownership, starting a family. But much of today’s younger generations have little reason to believe they’ll be ticking off any of those items anytime soon.
Working hard offers no sure route to living a good quality of life. Successive governments have made political choices that have privileged those who have lots of wealth and penalised those who don’t- inevitably that has meant young people have largely lost out.
For the past few decades, politicians have tended to say next to nothing about young people, often failing to acknowledge the issues they are facing, but so far Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s rhetoric has been a little bit different. He’s made a point of mentioning various catastrophes facing young people a number of times since taking office in July, and at the Labour Party Conference boldly announced that he intends to “end neoliberalism”. There appears to be some recognition at the very least that this youth crisis isn’t sustainable.
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But will it be enough? Can this government’s new economic plans seriously challenge the fundamental political choices that have made young people’s lives so hard? Or does it just offer young people a bit more support in an economy otherwise severely stacked against them?
It's fair to say this was not a budget of big sweeping changes but one largely characterised by lots of small tweaks to ease the cost of living, an extension of the litany of small policy announcements Burnham’s government made throughout the summer (for example the £2 bus fare cap). However, the benefits of these smaller changes seem to be stacked in favour of older people.The extra £100 for some council taxpayers won’t apply to students who are exempt from council tax. Maintaining the fuel duty freeze is beneficial for drivers, but fewer young people are likely to be drivers (the median cost of learning to drive and taking a driving test is £2,600).
In fact, when global energy prices spike, public transport - which younger people are more reliant on - tends to get more expensive. There seems to be less insulation from the cost of living crisis if you’re young.
As the Milburn report outlines one of young people’s biggest hurdles is employment, particularly securing well paid work. The final report isn’t due till November, so the government’s full approach to tackling the so-called NEET crisis is yet to be outlined. The budget did however commit to large government construction and infrastructure projects requiring at least 3% of its workforce to be apprentices and throughout the summer the government has had a big focus on getting young people back in the labour market.
Aarun aged 24, from London describes himself as a downwardly mobile graduate; he's working in a non-graduate role despite having a masters degree. He feels there’s little being done for young people like him. “Burnham targeting policy at B.Tech qualifications etc seemed to frame the university route and outcome as something which works at the moment. I think it is obvious to most people it doesn’t”.
Successive governments have encouraged young people to attend university under the justification that it leads to higher salaries; but increasingly that's not the experience of many young graduates. Aarun believes “the financial position of the graduate and struggles in the job market are massively overlooked. That’s not to say I think focusing on non-graduates is wrong, I still think it’s a move in the right direction…in many ways these people are doing better than graduates. But…I think [the government] is missing the challenges of the entry job market."
"I don’t think I’ve heard one government minister talk about it, or how they’re going to protect us from AI stealing these jobs, or even just the number of jobs available.” Those under Plan 2 student loans have accumulated an enormous level of debt, but so far there’s been no announcements to tackle this. Iqra, 18 from Northampton says “ the increased amount for student loans from 9k to 10k is something to fear”. Student debt “...is only increasing and it really makes me question if further education is worth it”. Some students can’t even enjoy the minimum wage increase, as it means a 21-year-old, who is working full time on the minimum wage with a student loan from after 2023, will now earn enough to start paying back 9% of their earnings.
Speaking to Keir Milburn, academic and author of “Generation Left” an exploration of how young people’s more difficult circumstances are shaping their politics, he feels a budget for young people needs to have a bigger focus on education. “A budget for young people would need to increase education spending, particularly at the higher education level as the whole sector is in a state of collapse. This would involve abolishing student loans which have comprehensively failed everyone: tax payers, graduates, universities. At the same time, forgiving the onerous student debt of graduates would be a huge boost to growth.” Student loans are reportedly under review but for now “breathing space” for everyone but students seems to be a running theme in this budget.
Then there’s housing, likely the biggest cost any young person will be facing. Young people are spending substantial proportions of their income on housing, renting for longer, delaying major life decisions and becoming increasingly dependent on family wealth to access home ownership. “Over half of my income goes on rent” Aarun says. “A decrease in rent would make the biggest difference to my pressures.” Likewise Harold, 27 from Ipswich/London says extortionate service charges - which “feel like the most pointless” in terms of what you actually get for your money - should be tackled “through some kind of cap”. Aarun says “rent caps implemented properly and consistently and the state building more council housing than it ever has done” would be of significant help.
The government has announced more money to tackle rough sleeping, £1.5 billion extra for around 10,000 additional homes in England and landlords taxes are going up by 2%. There will also be a new “First Time Buyer” ISA to provide more support for those saving for their first home and Burnham announced last month that first-time buyers could purchase a home with a deposit as low as 2.5%. But without rent freezes or caps (policies this government has rejected) none of that addresses the immediate pressures of extortionate rents younger people are facing in the private rented sector. Similarly, allowing young people to buy homes with a smaller deposit doesn’t really tackle the central issue of why housing is so expensive in the first place. It just allows young people to take on potentially more unsustainable long-term debt.
The pensions triple lock policy has created some generational conflict since it was first implemented in 2011, but there’s mixed views from young people on the government’s recent decision to remove it. Aarun believes we should “protect the poorest pensioners by any means necessary of course, but don’t be giving financially comfortable pensioners extra funds - it seems ridiculous to me. Can this extra money be re-routed into protecting the poorest of the younger generations? Poverty should always be looked at first”. However he added “I don’t want to see a pensioner vs younger generation trade-off. I want to see a rich vs poor trade-off, across generations.”
Janelle,16 from Northampton also agrees with not pitting old against young. “Pensioners should be protected from poverty, and young people should have a realistic opportunity to build a financially secure future…I understand why pensioners need protection. Many depend on their state pension as their main source of income and may struggle to increase their earnings when costs rise…but I think the government should introduce protections that reflect our [younger people’s] needs, such as more affordable public transport, student support that keeps pace with rising costs, better access to paid employment and stronger financial assistance for low-income families.”
There’s also a perception that politicians are failing to understand young people holistically. There’s lots of factors impacting young people long before they are looking for a job or going onto higher education: high pressure school systems, exclusions, mental-health pressures, fewer youth clubs, community spaces and affordable places for young people to socialise and build independence. The covid generation suffered lasting effects on their education, development and social lives being highly disrupted.
Janelle says “I think politicians sometimes assume that young people’s main challenges are school, revision and exams. However, some of us are also dealing with financial pressure at home, family responsibilities and the emotional impact of watching our parents struggle. Children in single-parent households might be trying to balance their education and personal lives while worrying about money or feeling guilty about asking their parents for things.”
That’s reflected to an extent with the Milburn report which, whilst so far does understand there are lots of intersecting issues disadvantaging young people, it ultimately views young people’s issues through their lack of employment prospects. Youth Futures Foundation found 50% of 18-24 year old NEETs are also not claiming benefits, and a higher proportion of them are from ethnic minority backgrounds. This suggests there’s a significant chunk of young people who are almost totally inactive within wider society. The focus on increasing productivity in the job market and getting the welfare bill down could mean young people’s wider joy, happiness and wellbeing isn’t being treated as a right in of itself.
The banking sector was likely breathing a sigh of relief after the budget. Initial reports were suggesting that the surcharge tax would go back to 8%, it’s been reinstated instead to 6%. Other than a 2% increase on taxes for landlords, big corporations and asset owners have been largely untouched. Young people are part of “the many” but the reluctance to tax wealth makes this budget feel like it’s really for the markets. How much can we expect the lives of young people - who are unlikely to have any assets - to improve whilst the majority of money being moved around is at the bottom not the top? How sustainable is this level of wealth inequality?
Whilst bankers get to enjoy more of their bumper profits, or the government commits to billions more defence spending in tandem with the private sector, even being able to just have some fun seems increasingly unaffordable for younger people. “Going on nights out are…extortionate if you do them properly, for example like buying drinks when you’re out” Aarun says.
“Clubs and pubs cost way too much and restrict my ability to go out in the way I’d ideally want. I end up thinking f*ck it I’ll just go out, I shouldn’t let prices get in the way of living my youth” but he feels he has to then make significant sacrifices in other areas, such as having to buy “the cheapest food I can” to make up for that expense. The minimum wage is increasing by 3.9% however Labour had previously promised to abolish discriminatory age bands. This budget keeps the disparity meaning if you are 18-20 you’ll continue to be paid less for exactly the same work, justified for no other reason than your age.
Contrastingly, the wider global backdrop is of young people fighting back. Across Europe and parts of the global south, young people are taking collective action against many of the same systemic issues the youth are facing in the UK. Keir Milburn warns that another Labour government that fails to improve the material conditions of the young will face consequences. “We saw what happened to the Starmer government. The young defected to the Left – to the Green Party – which saw Starmer deposed.”
Keir believes Burnham is “the last chance saloon for Labour. I suspect he will become unstuck next year because of the inadequacy of their policy and plans in the face of the gigantic crises coming down the line. There are youth-led revolts exploding across Europe and further afield (India, etc.). I strongly suspect we will see something similar in the UK in 2027 which will change the already volatile political landscape in the country.”
We may in fact be at a tipping point. “The real problem is the balance of forces in the UK favour the oligarchs and the extremely rich, who own the media eco-system.” adds Keir. “But there are huge crises coming this year – extreme food price inflation due to the Super-El Nino, and the very real potential of a huge economic crisis as the AI investment bubble bursts – these may be of such a scale that the alliance between the big rentiers (asset managers, private equity) and the small rentiers (older home owning and small landlord cohorts) is going to come under incredible pressure and may become broken.” The near future looks extremely challenging, and young people are likely to be at the coal face.
The way this government treats the young may make or break it. Young people are not just economic units who need to be ushered into the job market; they are facing profound, complex challenges around housing, inequality, mental health and an increasingly black-pilled future. These issues can’t be resolved through piecemeal policies. Long term affordable housing, education and high quality work should be the cornerstone of this government’s approach to a national renewal. If we can’t build a country where young people feel like they have a stake, then we can’t expect things to get better anytime soon.
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