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12 hours ago
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Former industrial communities across Britain are facing “entrenched disadvantages” stretching back decades, the latest social mobility research has said.
It raises specific concern about the rising number of young people aged 16-24 not in education, employment or training (Neets), which was one in seven between 2022 and 2024.
The Social Mobility Commission’s state of the nation report also highlighted “extreme regional differences” when it came to conditions of childhood, fewer job opportunities, less innovation and lack of growth.
Yorkshire, the north-east, the Midlands, Wales and Scotland were still living with the impacts of deindustrialisation, it said, referring to “half a century of economic disadvantage and decline”.
However, it also identified “beacons of hope”, with favourable conditions for future innovation and growth in Aberdeen, Brighton, Bristol, Cheshire West and Chester, Edinburgh, Oxfordshire, Reading, West Berkshire and Manchester.
Alun Francis, the commission’s chair, said economic opportunities had become “over-concentrated” in specific places, even with the positive signs in some areas.
“Entire communities, often in post-industrial, seaside towns have been left behind with deep-rooted disadvantages. This is the defining social mobility challenge of our generation,” he said.
The report, the largest collection and analysis of data on social mobility in the UK, acknowledges that the percentage of younger people getting good jobs has grown, with 48.2% of 25- to 29-year-olds in professional careers as of 2022-24, compared with 36.1% in 2014-16. But it also highlighted a widening gap between those from privileged and those from working-class backgrounds who were getting these jobs.
Women from less well-off backgrounds also continue to find it harder to get higher-paid jobs than more privileged women, according to the commission, a statutory advisory body that reports on social mobility across the UK and makes recommendations relating to England.
International comparisons in the report show the UK stands alongside countries such as France and Japan in offering young people a good chance to exceed the educational achievement of their parents.
It also found the UK has similar job mobility rates to other big western European countries, such as Germany and Sweden, which have had fewer people moving on to better jobs as the growth in professional roles has slowed down.
The annual report was published after the commission presented evidence to parliament last week on what success looks like for people living in Britain today.
It found people place less value on professional or managerial occupations, or even earning a high income, than they do on work-life balance, job security and doing work they care about.
The measures they regard as the most important are health, physical and mental wellbeing, relationships with family and friends, education and social connection. Owning a home and having savings was also valued by respondents, who said they did not believe that life in the UK was “fair”.
Statistics in that evidence found that people considered class identity to be “sticky”, with more than three in four describing themselves as the same class as their parents.
Those already at the top of the social class ladder were more concerned with climbing it than those at the bottom.
