Under-30s pay the highest price for the UK’s cost-of-living crisis
The cost-of-living crisis is biting across the generations, but the under-30s are likely to be among the hardest hit. Arecent report from the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank suggested the age group will bear the brunt of Covid and the health and social care levy.
In common with other workers, they face rising prices and bills. But those with student debts face another cost – millions can expect higher bills on student loans next year after the government froze the thresholds at which repayments start.
“Young people’s prospects have suffered,” says Liz Emerson, co-founder of the Foundation. “Covid borrowing, the energy crisis and sky-high inflation have exacerbated the situation, with policymakers choosing to extract more tax from younger, rather than older, generations by targeting earned, rather than unearned, income.”
According to chartered financial planner Rosie Hooper, young people face a “triple whammy” of tax increases, with a portion of any wage rises they are able to negotiate disappearing before they are paid.
This generation – dubbed “generation precariat” (that is, they are living precariously without security)– typically rents and earns less in real terms than those who were young adults in the late 1990s.
The median gross weekly wage of someone aged 18 to 21 hasfallen by almost a fifth in real terms since 1997, while last week, the Office for National Statistics said that average wages in Britain had fallen at the fastest rate since 2014.
We spoke to some of them about their experiences.
When Smith, 23, saw a breaking news alert saying Britons were to face the biggest fall in living standards since records began, their first thought was “more?”(Smith uses the pronouns they/them).
The delivery driver says:
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