Looking for work: youth, masculine disadvantage and precarious employment in post-millennium England

ABSTRACT

The changing nature of youth (under)employment in England since the start of the new millennium is explored through a comparative analysis of three cohorts of young working class men searching for work in English towns between 2001 and 2017. Labour market changes, including the rise of precarious work and forms of self-employment, as well as increasing inequality and cuts in youth services since the financial crisis in 2008, are having a serious impact on the least qualified young men. However, changes in the nature of employment at the bottom end of the service suggest the re-evaluation of earlier claims about the relative disadvantage of (some) young men.

KEYWORDS:

• Young men
• employment
• deference
• masculinity
• austerity
• platform economy

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the young men who talked so freely and to Abby Hardgrove and Esther Rootham who worked with me in Swindon and Anna Harris in Hastings. The research was funded by Rowntree (Cambridge) and Leverhulme (Swindon and Hastings). Two anonymous referees provided useful and encouraging comments: thank you too.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.