‘Mixed picture’ for social mobility as Brits climb career ladder yet can’t afford a home

• Commission releases annual analysis of life chances in the UK
• Finding education and occupational mobility improving but worsening outlooks for youth employment and chance of owning a home
• Life progress still appears to be influenced by sex, disability and ethnicity

The UK’s social mobility landscape presents “mixed picture” of progress and setbacks, according to the Social Mobility Commission’s annual State of the Nation 2026 report published today.

Educational mobility has improved over recent decades, with people from non-graduate families having a much better chance of gaining degrees since 1991. Though the pace of improvement has begun to level out – potentially reflecting a narrowing of the earnings premium from gaining a degree.

The university boom has had a knock-on effect for occupational mobility, with more people moving from working-class to professional-class jobs reaching 36% for men and 38% for women by 2021.

But the picture is not positive for everyone or everywhere.   The intergenerational transmission of wealth through housing is becoming increasingly important to people’s life chances. After 2001, people have become more likely to be in the same housing status as their parents (renting or owning). For women, this trend goes back to 1991.

Upward housing mobility, the likelihood of moving from renting in childhood to homeownership in adulthood, has also become less likely since 1991. Around 1.7 million people in England and Wales had experienced downward housing mobility in 2021, compared to only 850,000 who experienced upward housing mobility – a reversal from patterns in 1991, when upward mobility was three times more common than downward.

Young people are facing an increasingly tough transition from classroom to career with youth unemployment at its highest level in over a decade (16% in 2025), stubbornly high levels of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) reaching a 12-year high of 9% for 16-to-18-year-olds in 2024, and a falling vacancy-to-jobseeker ratio (0.7 in 2023 to 0.4 in 2025) – suggesting fewer opportunities for those entering the labour market.

Beyond national and regional trends, the report highlights deep-rooted disadvantages.  Women continue to hit a ceiling of career progression before men – despite girls outperforming boys from age 5 to university, they still end up in lower-paid jobs.  This disconnect between academic achievement and reward in the world of work is also seen among some ethnic minorities. Disadvantaged pupils from Chinese, Indian and Bangladeshi backgrounds all consistently achieve better GCSE grades than their White British peers, yet Bangladeshi young people face significantly poorer career outcomes.

Even when holding the same level of qualification such as a degree, disabled young people earn 8% less than their non-disabled peers. In 2020 to 2025, non-disabled people from lower  working class backgrounds were more than twice as likely to reach a higher professional job as their disabled peers (around 10% versus 4%).

State of the Nation is the most comprehensive analysis of social mobility in the UK, and new access to data sources means for the first time 2026 covers:

• Half a century of analysis with access to the Office for National Statistics.
• Longitudinal Study (ONS-LS), which directly links children’s and parents’; census records in England and Wales, drawing on data going back to 1971.
• More accurate travel-to-work areas (TTWA) using local labour market boundaries rather than administrative boundaries, to give a clearer picture of job opportunities and expose previously hidden ‘job deserts’.
• New occupational structure by local authority with census data covering 2001 to 2021/22 to uncover regional disparity in the ability to progress – for instance Leeds has around one professional job for every working-class resident, whereas Hull has only half a professional job for every working-class resident.
• More detailed look at sex, disability and ethnicity to show intersectionality of disadvantage.
• A more in-depth look at Northern Ireland by local authority with access to Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), Census 2001, 2011, and 2021 to 2022 data

Chair of the Social Mobility Commission, Alun Francis said:

“Over successive State of the Nation reports, we have built an increasingly comprehensive and independent body of evidence on social mobility in the UK. This year’s report takes that work further, with more detailed geographical analysis of local opportunities, showing where progress has been made and where it has stalled.

At a time when the government is pursuing far-reaching reforms to how power is devolved across the country, this evidence has an especially important role to play. Effective policymaking depends on understanding the challenges facing different places and communities, so national and local leaders can focus on the right problems and deliver lasting improvements in people’s lives.”

Notes to editors

The State of the Nation 2026 report is published by the Social Mobility Commission.

In September, the Government announced its intention to close the Commission. The Social Mobility Commission remains an active statutory body until Parliament passes legislation to abolish it and will continue to fulfil its legal duties until then.

• Read the full report: State of the Nation 2026: Who’s getting ahead
• Data explorer tool
• For media enquiries, please contact: smcmedia@socialmobilitycommission.gov.uk

Reading the data

• This year’s report marks a significant step forward in the evidence base on social mobility, incorporating the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study (ONS-LS) for the first time.
• Drawing on linked census data going back to 1971, the ONS-LS allows researchers to follow people from childhood into adulthood and compare their education, occupation and housing with their parents’.