Higher rents preventing young people moving to get better paid jobs

Higher rents are reducing the financial gains from moving to better paying parts of the country, and mean that young people are less mobile than they were 20 years ago, according to new research. The number of young people aged 25 to 34 starting a new job and moving home in the last year has fallen from 30,000 in 1997 to 18,000 in 2018, the analysis by the Resolution Foundation, funded by the Nuffield Foundation shows. This fall is all the more surprising, it says, given that young people today are far more likely to live in private rented accommodation rather than own a home or live in the social rented sector. Indeed, young private renters’ propensity to move areas for work has fallen by two thirds over the last 20 years. While a greater share of private renters today have children, which can make it harder to move, this only explains a tiny part of the fall in job mobility for young private renters, it explains. The analysis identifies an alternative explanation for falling job and home mobility which is that the financial incentives for moving are lower. That is partly good news, it says, as the country has seen employment gaps fall, meaning fewer young people are forced to move away from employment black spots to find work. The average gap between highest and lowest employment areas of the country has fallen by almost a fifth since 2000.