UK youth unemployment is higher than the EU average, but not the ‘highest in Europe’

Conservative shadow education secretary Laura Trott MP claimed on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that the UK has “the highest rate of youth unemployment in Europe”.

She made a similar claim on X, writing that “youth unemployment is the highest in Europe”.

This isn’t correct. While the youth unemployment rate in the UK is higher than the EU average, several other European countries have a higher rate.

Earlier this month we saw a number of reports, including from the Telegraph and the Resolution Foundation think tank, that the UK’s youth unemployment rate had surpassed that of the EU average for the first time, based on data published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Ms Trott’s colleague, the Conservative shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride, correctly claimed last week that youth unemployment was “now above the European average”, while Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch also correctly said during this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions that it was “now higher here than in the EU”.

It seems likely this is what Ms Trott meant to say. However, when we contacted her office about her claim we did not receive a response. At the time of publication she does not appear to have attempted to correct or clarify her X post.

What does the data show?

The most recent comparable OECD data covers July-September 2025. It shows that in the UK the unemployment rate for 15 to 24-year-olds was 15.3%—higher than the EU average of 15.2%.

However, a number of individual European countries—including Belgium (17.9%), France (19.0%), Italy (20.9%), Spain (25.2%) and Sweden (24.6%)—had a higher youth unemployment rate than the UK.

It is correct that Q3 2025 was the first time since comparable OECD records began in 2005 that the UK’s youth unemployment rate was higher than the EU average—the two had the same rate in Q4 2024, but in all other quarters the UK’s rate has been lower.

The UK’s youth unemployment rate in the Q4 2025 was 16.1%. At the time of writing the OECD has not yet published data for the EU average or individual European countries over the same period.