Younger Britons are significantly more likely to feel pessimistic about the prospects of upward social mobility than older generations in the UK, according to a new study by the Office for National Statistics.
Around three quarters of 16-29-year-olds believe children today will not have a better future than the current generation of adults, compared to just over half of respondents above the age of 70.
The study also found less than a third of respondents aged 16-29 believed they have done better in life than their parents at the same age, compared to 70% of respondents aged 70+.
The findings come amid a climate of mounting economic pressures for younger Britons, with rising unemployment, rent prices and increased financial insecurity reshaping expectations of upward mobility.
For Evie Sutcliffe, 25, a DPhil student in English at the University of Oxford, the difficulties of social mobility start well before young people enter the workforce.
She argues that the lack of confidence in social mobility may stem from a systemic undermining of the education system and its benefits.
She said: “The idea of social mobility through education is slowly being dismantled. It’s becoming harder to justify the financial risk of university when there are no jobs available at the end of the degree.
“The job market is increasingly oversaturated and going to university is not the golden ticket it used to be in the days of free tuition fees.”
According to the latest figures by the ONS, youth unemployment among 16-to-24-year-olds reached 16% in the first quarter of 2026, the highest in more than a decade, while graduate hiring fell 8% from 2024 to 2025, the weakest year since the Covid-19 pandemic.
These labour market pressures have been compounded by a prolonged squeeze on living standards.
Real wage growth has remained subdued since the 2008 financial crisis, while median rents have risen sharply over the same period, making it increasingly difficult for younger people to accumulate wealth or step onto the property ladder.
According to a recent study by the OECD, London is the most exposed city in the developed world to the threat of automation, with more than three-quarters of jobs highly exposed to AI.
Taken together, these economic and labour market trends indicate that many of the traditional routes to upward social mobility have become far too difficult to navigate in the present climate, particularly for younger generations entering the workforce.
Against this backdrop, emigration amongst younger Britons has also risen.
According to the TEFL academy, ONS data reveals a sustained acceleration among people in their 20s leaving the UK, from 92,000 in 2018 to an estimated 135,000 by mid-2025.
Taha Khan, 28, an Accounting Advisor at PwC, is one of those emigrants, having moved to Dubai in January after living in London his whole life.
He said: “I moved to Dubai because the Middle East in general is growing a lot faster than the West, and therefore it attracts better salaries, career growth and opportunities.
“London was slowly becoming uninhabitable – slow career growth, high cost of living and a growing right-wing sentiment.”
Despite being cautiously optimistic about his career prospects in London, he noted that his earnings are around 10% higher in Dubai for a similar role – a difference which he says has given him a more positive outlook for the future.
“My situation here is way better,” he said. “I actually have a solid path to afford a house when I’m here in Dubai, which motivates me so much more to work.
“There is an increasingly better access to affordable housing, coupled with better salaries. I know that I can stick it out here for a few years and afford housing.”
Khan, who is of Muslim faith, also found that the lifestyle in Dubai felt like a better cultural fit for him and believes that effort is rewarded there in a way it isn’t in London.
“For the near future, I don’t see myself coming back to the UK,” he said. “Life seems a lot better, safer, more prosperous, and more convenient for me here in Dubai, and I’m actually planning to have my family move with me over here.”
Khan is just one of many in the younger generation who are considering opportunities abroad for better upward mobility.
But while confidence in social mobility in the UK is relatively low across all age groups, the ONS survey reveals a clear generational divide in perceptions of the UK’s social and economic outlook.
Older respondents were consistently more optimistic than younger people about opportunities for upward mobility and were more likely to believe that meritocracy still exists.
Around 43% of respondents aged 70 and over either agreed or strongly agreed that meritocracy still exists, compared with just 18% of those aged 16 to 29.
By contrast, 68% of 16-29 year olds either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement, suggesting that younger Britons are far less convinced that hard work and talent alone are enough to succeed.
Taken together, the findings point to a widening generational divide in perceptions of both social mobility and the UK’s wider economic outlook.
For many younger Britons, the question now is no longer whether they can surpass their parents’ standard of living, but if the traditional pathways to do so even still exist.
As labour market volatility clashes with rising costs-of-living, confidence that each generation will be better off than the last appears to be giving way to a more uncertain outlook, in which hard work alone is simply not enough to secure a better future for oneself.
Photo by AleMarssy80 from Pexels
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