The number of Britons stuck out of work for more than a year has surged to its highest level since 2016, with small employers warning that successive tax rises and the looming Employment Rights Act are quietly choking off the next generation of hires.
Fresh figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 474,000 people are now classified as long-term unemployed — meaning they have spent more than twelve months out of work. It is the highest tally since January 2016 and an unwelcome milestone for a labour market that, until recently, had been a rare bright spot in Britain’s stuttering recovery.
The deterioration has been sharp. Since Labour swept to power in July 2024, an additional 129,000 people have tipped into long-term joblessness, a sobering measure of how Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s £26bn raid on employer National Insurance has rippled through payrolls, particularly in the SME-heavy retail and hospitality sectors that are the backbone of high streets up and down the country.
A cooling labour market with a long tail
For owner-managers, the headline statistic is alarming because of what economists call “scarring”. The longer a candidate is out of work, the steeper the climb back becomes — skills atrophy, networks fray and confidence drains. That, in turn, blunts productivity, erodes the tax base and dulls consumer spending, the very engine many small firms rely on.
Stephen Evans, chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute, did not mince his words. “Even if some of the rise is cyclical because of the weak economy, the risk is that should the economy pick up they’ll find it more difficult to get back to work,” he said. “Nipping long-term unemployment in the bud really is massively important for the prospects of the economy, as well as for those individuals.”
Evans was particularly exercised about the under-25s, where, he argued, even brief spells of unemployment can leave a lasting dent on lifetime earnings and career prospects, a concern echoed in our earlier reporting on how Reeves’s tax rise has stalled hiring across the SME economy.
Young workers bear the brunt
The figures bear him out. The unemployment rate for 16-to-24-year-olds has climbed to 16.2 per cent, its highest level since January 2015, and the number of 18-to-24-year-olds in long-term unemployment has more than doubled since 2016. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that almost 640,000 people in that age band are now claiming out-of-work benefits, up from 556,000 at the end of 2022.
Fergus Jimenez-England, an economist at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, said young people were bearing the brunt of the chill. “There is a risk that labour market entrants become discouraged should they fail to find work quickly enough,” he warned, raising the spectre of a fresh wave of economic inactivity as discouraged jobseekers retreat to the benefits system.
The warning chimes with mounting evidence that Britain’s youth jobless crisis is deepening as AI and higher taxes hit hiring, with entry-level roles among the first to be axed when employers tighten the purse strings.
SME hiring budgets squeezed from every angle
For small businesses, the maths has rarely been more punishing. Employer National Insurance contributions have been ratcheted up, the National Living Wage has climbed again, and the Employment Rights Act has piled fresh compliance costs onto firms that often lack a dedicated HR function.
Andrew Wishart, an economist at Berenberg, summed up the corporate mood with characteristic bluntness. “By making companies more cautious about hiring, higher employer National Insurance, minimum wage and the strengthening of worker protections in the Employment Rights Act have probably raised the structural rate of unemployment.”
The result is plain to see in the official data: vacancies recently slumped to a five-year low and UK unemployment hit a 12-month high as job vacancies declined. Retail and hospitality — sectors that traditionally absorb school-leavers and second-jobbers — have shed more than 150,000 roles in the year to April 2026, according to ONS payroll data.
A political headache and a policy puzzle
The figures landed awkwardly in Westminster. Helen Whately, the shadow work and pensions secretary, accused ministers of allowing welfare to become “a long-term alternative to work”, arguing that prolonged spells out of employment exact a toll “not just on the unemployed and their families, but also on the taxpayer”.
Pat McFadden, the Work and Pensions Secretary, pointed to the ongoing fallout from the Iran conflict as “casting a shadow on the labour market”, while insisting that 416,000 more people are now in work compared with a year ago. “Boosting opportunity and tackling youth unemployment in every area remains our priority,” he said.
For Britain’s 5.5 million small and medium-sized businesses, however, the political back-and-forth offers cold comfort. With margins compressed by higher wage and tax costs, and with the structural rate of unemployment apparently drifting upwards, the prospect of a meaningful rebound in hiring before the next Budget looks slim.
The danger, as Evans put it, is that today’s cyclical squeeze hardens into tomorrow’s structural problem — and that a generation of young workers ends up paying the price long after the current economic chill has lifted.
Read more:
Long-term unemployment climbs to a decade high as Britain’s hiring engine stalls