Ethnic minority youth employment evidence gap analysis

Systemic erasure in data collection

Capturing data about the experience of different ethnic groups, alongside other key demographic information such as geographic region, socioeconomic status, and religion is crucial to allowing intersectional analysis and thereby fully understanding the experiences of different ethnic groups.

Few national datasets or other evidence include breakdowns by ethnic groups at a sufficiently granular level to understand the impact of policy changes or interventions, with some such as the Universal Credit statistics not including ethnic breakdowns. This lack of data capture impedes understanding of the uptake of specific benefits by different ethnic groups, and is in contrast to statistics on Jobseekers Allowance or Employment and Support Allowance.

Where datasets do include ethnicity, most focus on broad ethnic groupings based on the standard five ethnic groups included in ONS research (white, black, Asian, mixed, and other). Where more detailed ethnic groups are used, this is often limited to the 16-18 detailed ethnic groups used in ONS research, meaning that relevant subgroups, such Somali as a subcategory of black African, are not included. This results in a lack of understanding of the experience of these subgroups.

There are other ways in which ethnic identity is erased. For instance, Gypsy, Roma and Irish Traveller groups are frequently excluded from surveys and national data leading to a gap in data available for analysis, and the latest wave of the Millennium Cohort Study did not ask young people (aged 17) their ethnicity, instead using parental ethnicity in analysis. This gap masks any changes in ethnic identification between young people and their parents, and may lead to errors where parents are from separate ethnic backgrounds. However, the next wave of the study will ask young people their ethnicity.

Lack of culturally relevant data

While the timeliness of data is generally good, only 4 pieces of evidence fully met this criteria by including a time period that covered both pre- and post-pandemic data.

Many communities experience challenges or barriers not shared by the majority population, or by other minority ethnic communities. There are also differences in practices, experiences and systems of support across different cultures and communities, such as different approaches to debt or differences in access to personal protective equipment, that may be missed or misunderstood without the collection of relevant data.

The review shows that culturally relevant data is generally lacking in evidence on employment outcomes for young people from minority ethnic groups, with many data collection instruments not covering questions or considerations that are culturally relevant for specific ethnic groups.

This creates challenges as the data on employment outcomes does not contain the nuance necessary to account for specific cultural experiences, and leads to a lack of understanding about the specific challenges faced.

In addition to this, there is a lack of published local datasets and data on culturally relevant regional issues.

Lack of different types of employment data

Evidence looked in at the quantitative review was assessed against eight different types of employment grouping criteria.