ONS: Where Young People Live Shapes Their Outcomes, With Local Economy Hitting Young Men Hardest

New ONS analysis finds that living arrangements and dependent children explain much of the gap in outcomes between local areas, while local economic conditions have a stronger effect on young men than young women.

Young people’s living arrangements — whether they live with parents, a partner, or independently — and whether they have dependent children account for much of the geographical variation in outcomes such as education, employment and wellbeing across English local authority areas, the Office for National Statistics has reported. The figures show that local factors including the economy, labour market conditions, healthcare access, education, skills levels and deprivation have a larger effect on young men than on young women.

The analysis matters directly for Kent, which spans coastal towns with weaker labour markets and higher deprivation alongside more affluent commuter areas. That internal variation means the gaps the ONS identifies nationally are likely to be visible within the county itself — between, say, a coastal town and a commuter belt district — rather than only between Kent and other parts of England.

Youth unemployment is already higher than for any other age group. Parliamentary research briefings record a male youth unemployment rate of around 16 per cent at certain points, compared with around 4.5 per cent for all men aged 16 and over — a gap that reflects how exposed young men are to whatever local jobs happen to be available. In Kent, that means sectors such as logistics, construction, manufacturing and tourism carry particular weight in shaping outcomes for young men.

Young women face a different set of pressures. ONS census-based analysis shows that economic inactivity among young women is more often linked to looking after a home or family, compared with young men, who are more likely to be unemployed or inactive for other reasons. So for young mothers in Kent, childcare availability, social housing and family support services may matter as much as — or more than — the state of the local jobs market.

The ONS Subnational Indicators dataset, which covers Kent as a local authority area, gives policymakers the tools to benchmark the county’s performance on youth employment, skills and health against other English areas. The Social Mobility Commission has noted that sickness accounts for inactivity among roughly one quarter of young people not in education, employment or training, with a slightly higher share among men than women — a further sign that the barriers young men and young women face are not identical.

What the ONS has not published in summary form — and what cannot be independently verified from the tweet alone — is the precise statistical contribution of living arrangements to geographical variation, such as the share of variance explained. Those figures sit in the underlying publication rather than in the headline findings.