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Around 20 percent of school leavers who will find out their GCSE results next week will be claiming unemployment benefit when they are 21. This is according to a new report by the Prince’s Trust and Sheffield University. The figures are even more stark for those leaving without any qualifications as they are twice as likely to end up on benefits than those who achieve some decent results.

This highlights the huge importance of getting decent grades so that you can go on to university and hopefully secure yourself a graduate job at the end of your education.

As recent figures have shown unemployment standing at nearly two and a half million, the Prince’s Trust report predicts that today’s 18 to 25 year olds could be the most affected since the Great Depression of 1929. The number of young people not in training or employment has now risen over nine hundred thousand.

The government, however, have stressed that they are investing billions of pounds and doing all they can to help young people and students find jobs and work experience after leaving school – or go on to further education to improve their prospects of finding graduate jobs in a few years time.

A government spokesman said: "We agree with the Prince's Trust that we have to help young people. That's why in July we launched Backing Young Britain, a cross-government campaign which aims to bring businesses and public and voluntary sectors together to ensure that the valuable skills and experience of our young people aren't being wasted. Our Graduate Talent Pool helps create and match people to internships and assists more graduates in kick-starting their careers by gaining the skills and experience they need to get-on through an internship and will offer a great way for companies to inject fresh talent into the workplace.”

But Professor Dorling of Sheffield University - who compiled the report - thought that the government could do more to help young people by persuading universities to accept more students in the next couple of years and by speeding up their apprenticeship programme.

If you don’t want to make up a part of the future unemployment statistics then get ahead of the rest of your peers by looking for internships and graduate jobs using the e4s search facilities today.