UK Unemployment: Young Men Most Likely to be on Universal Credit

Young men make up the majority of new claimants for the UK government's new benefits system.

According to figures from the Department of Work and Pensions, more than six in ten (63%) of new claims for Universal Credit are for people under 25 and only 4% of claimants are over 50.

Universal Credit was been introduced by the Coalition Government to place six exiting benefits and tax credits , including Income Support and Housing Benefit, with a single monthly payment.

The research also revealed that 5,910 people have started on Universal Credit between April 2013 and 28 February 2014.

The DWP disclosed that more men start on the benefit compared to women, with a ratio of around 7:3 or 71% against 29%.

Universal Credit was piloted in Ashton-Under-Lyne in April 2013, since then the new benefit has been rolled out to 19 other constituencies.

But Universal Credit has come under fire for, among other things, missing its roll-out deadline.

Iain Duncan Smith, who has already pushed the welfare reform's deadline back, said 700,000 Employment and Support Allowance recipients will be moved to UC after 2017.

The figures comes after the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that the country's unemployment rate fell to 6.8% in three months to March, down from 6.9%.

There are now more than 30.4 million people in work in the UK.

But the youth unemployment rate is still high at 19% in the three months to March, down from 19.1%, as more than 860,000 16 to 24 year olds were out of work.