David Cameron wants to take housing benefit away from under-25s, arguing the move would save £2bn a year. Housing benefit is mainly claimed by those in work, with 93 per cent of new claimants and 80 per cent of total recipients in a job, so the plan would largely be a redistribution from young low-wage workers to elsewhere.
Thirteen major charities have attacked the proposal, arguing it would take a vital safety net away from young people. What is rarely mentioned is that the welfare state is already stacked against young people in other areas, with the housing benefit plan simply another item on a list.
Working tax credit
Low wage workers over the age of 25 can get their wages topped up by working tax credit by as much as £1,450 a year. This wage subsidy makes working more attractive, and allows businesses to pay a lower rate; these combined means it probably has a positive effect on employment. But despite much political disquiet about record-high youth unemployment, which is bucking the slight downward general unemployment trend, young workers are exempt from this subsidy, leaving many jobs paying very little.
National Minimum Wage
Though now largely forgotten, when the National Minimum Wage was introduced some argued it might have an impact on jobs. While successive governments have been happy to exclude young workers from Working Tax Credit despite the possible resulting unemployment, the opposite is true with the NMW. So, a 20 year old worker only has a wage floor of £4.98, compared to £6.19 for a 21 year old, while those who leave school at 16 and go into work can expect to be paid as little as £3.68 – nearly 60 per cent less than the adult rate.
Work Programme
When questioned on their strategy to tackle youth unemployment, the Government points to its Work Programme, which Jobcentres usher young people onto three months before their older peers. What is not usually brought up is that the Work Programme is structured in a way that values youth jobs less than jobs for older people, with fewer incentives for providers to find under-25s work. The total payment made to providers who find work for someone over-25 is £4,400, while each young person found a job only nets them £3,800, a full £600 less per case: providers have a built-in financial incentive to focus on helping older claimants, which could help explain why young people are disproportionately unemployed.
Jobseekers’ Allowance
If someone under 25 finds themselves out of work, as nearly a million across the country do today, they don’t get the £71-a-week JSA payment afforded to those over 25 – instead they get £56.25, a full 20 per cent less. Since the amount of money paid from JSA doesn’t cover anything more than subsistence levels, and prices in shops are the same for everyone regardless of age, this almost certainly affects the standard of living of the young unemployed who have to fend for themselves.
Defenders of the set-up might argue that young people are less likely to have a family or other commitments and so have lower costs. But the welfare system already takes these things into account through situational payments like child benefit. Moreover, it would be difficult to imagine such restrictions imposed solely on the basis of age at the top end. It’s not clear that further sanctions on the young is consistent with the Government’s claim to want to share the pain of austerity equally, when they already get significantly less out of the system.
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