A study, published by campaign group PricedOut, suggests young people who move to cities with more job vacancies will be £1,002 a year worse off because of higher rent.
The report compared the availability of jobs in towns and cities with average salaries and rent prices. In England’s nine top cities for job availability, employees were paid more but spent an average 36% of their salary on rent.
In contrast, in the nine areas with least job availability, rent cost 24% of local median income.
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said the Government needed to do more to ensure young people could afford to live where work was available.
“This report shows how Britain’s chronic housing shortage is holding back young people desperate to start their careers,” O’Grady said.
“Unless we start building more affordable homes now, people will continue to get trapped in employment blackspots because they can’t afford to move to where the job opportunities are.”
The report highlighted London as having the highest rental rates as a proportion of income. An average 1.44 people compete for every job in the capital, where they are likely to spend half of their income on rent.
Despite London salaries being £3,804 higher than the national average, PricedOut suggested a typical Londoner is £4,027 worse-off as a result of steep rental prices.
PricedOut spokesman Dan Wilson Craw said landlords were “cashing in on young people who need to move to find work”.
“We desperately need more houses built in places where jobs are being created to ease the pressure on rents,” he said.
“If the Government wants to make sure work pays, it must act urgently to stop young workers handing over all their extra earnings, and more, to landlords.”
