No snakes, but no ladders: Young people, employment, and the low skills trap at the bottom of the contemporary service economy

In recent years, research and policy activity has primarily been concerned with the numbers, experiences and trajectories of apprentices and university students, or with the lives of ‘spectacular’, more obviously economically marginalised groups of young people who are entrenched in issues of social exclusion and deprivation. Many young people with level two and level three qualifications, however, directly enter the labour market.

This sizeable but unspectacular group remains overlooked by policymakers as well as researchers. These young people undertake new forms of employment in an increasingly polarized job market, rely on on-the-job training rather than higher education to enhance their human capital and compete more and more with graduates who cannot find jobs to match their own newly acquired high skill levels.