A FEW years ago Britain was in a panic about youth unemployment. As the economy sank, companies stopped hiring and let go of workers with the least bargaining power. The unemployment rate among 16- to 24-year-olds therefore soared (see chart). In many rich countries, the rise in youth unemployment has proved to be long-lasting: across the EU it has fallen by a mere 1.3 percentage points since 2011 and in countries like the Netherlands and Norway it has risen, raising fears that swathes of youngsters are structurally excluded from the labour market. Yet in Britain it has nosedived. The employment rate of young people not in full-time education is now at its highest since 2004. Why? The government credits its “long-term economic plan”. True, it helpfully raised the age at which people leave education to 18 last year, thus moving youngsters off the dole and into the classroom. Yet many programmes have fallen flat. A £300m ($425m) scheme whereby employers received a payment of up to £2,275 for hiring an unemployed young person closed in 2014 after low take-up. A £30m “Innovation Fund”, announced in 2011, rewarded investors who funded programmes to improve youngsters’ skills. It too closed to new entrants in November; the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has released no quantitative analysis of the scheme’s value for money.

The DWP has even gone in search of young people online, setting up a page on the BuzzFeed news site with articles such as “7 most obscure excuses given by benefit fraudsters”. The target audience seems unimpressed (“Why don’t you give the ten worst reasons for stopping a person’s benefit and leaving them destitute?” asks one).

Still, other welfare reforms have inadvertently helped the young. Since 2011 private providers of support for unemployed people have been paid according to how many of their clients move into work. In 2011-15 one-third of 18- to 24-year-olds in the programme moved into a job for a “sustained” period (meaning at least three or six months, depending on the person), compared with one-quarter of 25- to 49-year-olds. The difference may be partly down to this payment-by-results model, says Laura Gardiner of the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank: targeting youngsters, who may pick up skills quicker, has proved more lucrative to the contractors than focusing on harder-to-help claimants, particularly the over-50s and those with disabilities.

Other policies will make young workers more attractive still to employers. In April a “national living wage” comes into force, under which the minimum wage will rise from its current level of £6.70 an hour to around £9 an hour (equal to 60% of median earnings) by 2020. But it does not cover those under 25, and Len Shackleton of Buckingham University says that this may have already created a bias among employers towards hiring youngsters. So has a policy introduced last April under which employers do not pay certain types of national-insurance contributions for workers under 21.

Tech-literate youngsters are also well suited to the “gig” economy, in which short-term employment is arranged online or through apps. Gigs are proliferating: the number of “private hire” vehicles in London, a category that includes Uber taxis, has risen by 26% in the past two years. Uber claims that, in America, its drivers are twice as likely as conventional cabbies to be under 30.

With such a decline in youth unemployment, it is no wonder that wages are buoyant. In 2015 those aged 18-21 saw a 2.8% rise in median hourly pay, compared with a national average increase of 1.6%. Nonetheless, such was the turmoil experienced during the crisis that the inflation-adjusted hourly pay of those aged 22-29 is still 12% below what it was in 2008, a worse performance than any age group above it. Young Britons may be back in work, but they are not yet back in the money.