Thanim Rahman had every reason to smile when his LinkedIn profile picture was taken in September 2025.
Wearing his graduation gown, cap and hood, he holds a red-ribboned degree certificate — computer science first class — with the “Open to Work” badge displayed to attract recruiters. Six months, 50 applications and only one interview later, that picture tells a different story: he’s still unemployed.
Once a global hub for entry-level jobs, London is now the epicenter of a growing youth joblessness crisis that is threatening to blight the futures of hundreds of thousands of people and fuel a backlash against Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government in key municipal elections in just over a month.
Young people drawn to the British capital for its rich cultural life and opportunities are finding the junior roles that traditionally launched careers, from marketing to HR traineeships, increasingly hard to find in a labor market upended by artificial intelligence and global turmoil.
“When I went into computer science, I was expecting quite a lot of demand for the skills that I worked for,” said Rahman, a graduate of Goldsmiths, University of London. “But then we’re in 2026 now and people are talking about having AI replacing software developers, and it is hard to compete with a technology that makes mistakes, but can be easily fixed by a senior.”
The 22-year-old, who lives with his parents in Ilford in east London, described job-hunting as “demoralizing,” noting that it can take weeks for new roles to appear on LinkedIn.
The number of graduate roles in London fell from around 13,000 in 2019 to just over 2,000 at the start of 2026, according to Adzuna, a job-search website. Around one in four 16-24 year-olds in the capital are looking for work, the highest proportion in the UK. Young people in other European capitals like Madrid or Paris are faring better.
Like developed economies everywhere, AI is reshaping white collar work in Britain. But the problem of youth unemployment is also partly self inflicted, with swingeing increases to payroll taxes and the minimum wage making it more expensive for firms to hire workers.
The issue is expected to loom large on May 7 when local authority elections take place across England, including all of London’s 32 boroughs, in a major political test for Starmer after almost two years in power.
Labour currently controls 21 London councils but party strategists are braced for bruising losses as disaffected voters in the traditionally pro-Labour city drift toward the political fringes — Zack Polanski’s Green Party on the left and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK on the right.
“They all tell us they can’t get past that first hurdle of not having experience, they’re making hundreds of applications and they keep getting rejected,” said Richard Olszewski, a Labour politician and the council leader in Camden, whose nightclubs and universities make it a magnet for young people. “We meet families who are finding it difficult to make ends meet and who have adult children living with them.”
Youth unemployment in the UK is now higher than the average in the European Union, a region long criticized for job-sapping labor laws. Some 16% of active 16 to 24-year-olds were looking for work in the three months through January, yet the figure for London stands at 25% having surged in the past two years.
Olszewski acknowledged Labour policies have affected job opportunities, compounding the impact of Brexit, high interest rates and heightened geopolitical tensions. Shops and restaurants – heavily concentrated in the capital — are hiring fewer junior staff after Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves raised employer National Insurance Contributions to repair the public finances and hiked the national pay floor, with particularly big increases for younger workers.
With the Middle East conflict threatening to worsen Britain’s jobless crisis, Labour is now offering employers thousands of pounds to take on young people, aiming to reduce the nearly one million who are out of work or education. The government has also expanded its program guaranteeing a job for 18-21-year-olds who have been unemployed for 18 months to include those up to age 24.
For Konrad Rynski, a 24-year old living with his parents in Epsom, Surrey, it’s too little too late. By the time he completed his undergraduate degree in politics at the University of Bath with a year abroad in Brussels and his master’s at the London School of Economics in December 2024, he was already 23 and struggled to secure a role in public affairs or policy research in London.
“It feels like a trap,” said Rynski, who ended up working as a chef in a pub for 11 months. “You’re sold this idea of ‘London, everyone comes together’ and you have a big city and all these opportunities, but my friends abroad, over in Brussels or elsewhere, are finding much better opportunities and much easier than here.”
The composition of London’s jobs market leaves it vulnerable to AI, which tends to reward seniority and punish those who are just starting out. Around a third of London workers are employed in highly exposed AI sectors like professional services, administrative, IT and finance, compared to about a fourth for the UK as a whole.
Across the white-collar sector, employers are either automating junior roles or recruiting in cheaper locations, according to Daniel Harris, managing director at Robert Walters UK and Ireland. Only a fifth of all graduate roles are now advertised in London, down from one in three a decade ago, Adzuna data showed.
Even as roles move out of London, young people are still lured by the promise that a City job and Camden nightlife will make the capital’s high cost of living worthwhile. The result is a cutthroat jobs market where the odds are often stacked against fresh graduates.
“Employers often ask for prior experience, while lower-skilled roles are shrinking and being filled by older workers or graduates,” said Chris Goulden, director of impact and evidence at the Youth Futures Foundation. “In London, this is compounded by high housing costs and reliance on informal routes, for example internships, which exclude more disadvantaged young people.”
Youth Unemployment Is Higher Than in the EU for the First Time
Rita Iminova, 24, moved to Lewisham in southeast London days after finishing her master’s in corporate law at the University of Leeds, where she had lived for the past five years. Since then, she’s applied to around 20 jobs, including traineeships and paralegal roles. She continues to depend on her parents for financial support, which “adds to the stress” given London’s soaring rents.
“For one of the jobs, I got to the last stage of the interview, there was four of us, and they said all four of you could have done it,” Iminova said. “I did quite a few internships during university, at this point, all the people I knew I reached out to, I applied for jobs and then I didn’t get them.”
Rynski, who regularly meets a career coach at his local job center, left his 40-hour-a-week pub job in November to focus on finding work closer to what he studied. That might mean moving further away from home.
“Given my experience, I know what’s like abroad and I’m ready for it,” Rynski said. “I think at some point, I just have to realize London isn’t working for me so I have to try and find opportunities elsewhere.”