The COVID-19 pandemic has had many negative impacts on work and education. We are investigating how increased unemployment and changes to how education is delivered are affecting young people. We think that there will have been many job losses for people aged under 25, those self-employed, and workers who grew up in a disadvantaged family. We know that access to education and learning worsened and increased inequalities during the first lockdown in 2020. We will be researching further effects on learning at school and at home, as well as the possible long-term results. Long term unemployment affects lives in every way and missing out on classroom lessons and lectures will likely affect exam results and make it harder to find work. We are looking to calculate the likely decline in the country’s social mobility levels.
As an individual’s ability to improve their social status is a good indicator of economic growth, we are planning to work out the social mobility levels in the UK across generations.
To do this, we will be using data from the Labour Force Survey, the Business Impact from COVID-19 survey and Coronavirus and the Social Impacts on Great Britain survey from the Office for National Statistics
We will use this research to inform important public policies to try to avoid these harmful consequences. This might include job guarantees, a tax on the wealthy, a national tutoring service and an improved and credible vocational education system.
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