Youth Transitions and Legacies in an East London 2012 Olympic host borough

London 2012 was heralded as a once in a generation ‘game changer’, it was ‘officially’ sold as
being the catalyst that would finally transform the fortunes of East London and its residents;
particularly with regard to housing, educational attainment and employment. Official UK Labour
Market statistics since September 2011 have consistently shown that employment is continuing to rise
whilst unemployment is continuing to fall. The quarterly figures for June to August 2014 indicated
that the unemployment rate had fallen to 6 per cent (‘the lowest since late 2008’), and that there were
538,000 fewer unemployed people than was recorded the previous year during June to August 2013.
According to the Office for National Statistics (2014) this is the ‘largest annual fall in unemployment
on record’. Even taking into account regional variations, the figures suggest that in particular London
and the South East are performing well; indeed London (after Scotland) was the region with the
largest decrease in the unemployment rate at 0.9 per cent since the previous quarter. These buoyant
UK Labour Market statistics unfortunately mask a number of key issues that are contributing to
firstly increasing numbers of people in work poverty and secondly entrenched worklessness and
labour market disadvantage; both issues are disproportionately affecting particular regions, localities
and BAME communities (Catney and Sabater, 2015; Fisher and Nandi, 2015).

Gunter, Anthony (2017) ‘Youth Transitions and Legacies in an East London 2012 Olympic host borough’, in Cohen, Phil and Watt, Paul (eds.) London 2012 and the Post-Olympics City: A Hollow Legacy? London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 287-309. 2017, reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan.

This extract is taken from the author's original manuscript and has not been edited. The definitive, published, version of record is available here: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48947-0_10