Wales faces sharp rise in youth unemployment, warns of a ‘lost generation’

New figures released by the Welsh Liberal Democrats show that youth unemployment among 16‑24‑year‑olds in Wales jumped 9.5 percentage points between 2024 and 2025, reaching 16.3% and affecting about 32,800 young people. The surge is nearly nine times faster than in Scotland and five times the UK average, placing Wales alongside countries with long‑standing youth‑job problems such as France, Italy, Spain and Greece.

The party attributes the trend to successive Labour and Conservative governments’ failure to secure investment, a 25% cut to apprenticeship funding and higher National Insurance contributions that they say deter hiring. Liberal Democrat MP David Chadwick urged the Plaid Cymru‑led Welsh Government to reverse the apprenticeship cuts and prioritise skills and job creation to avoid creating a “lost generation”.