Higher rents are reducing the financial gains from moving to better paying parts of the country, and mean that young people are less mobile than they were 20 years ago, according to new research.

The number of young people aged 25 to 34 starting a new job and moving home in the last year has fallen from 30,000 in 1997 to 18,000 in 2018, the analysis by the Resolution Foundation, funded by the Nuffield Foundation shows.

This fall is all the more surprising, it says, given that young people today are far more likely to live in private rented accommodation rather than own a home or live in the social rented sector.

Indeed, young private renters’ propensity to move areas for work has fallen by two thirds over the last 20 years. While a greater share of private renters today have children, which can make it harder to move, this only explains a tiny part of the fall in job mobility for young private renters, it explains.

The analysis identifies an alternative explanation for falling job and home mobility which is that the financial incentives for moving are lower. It also states that private rents have risen fastest in higher-paying areas of the country, rising by almost 90 per cent in the highest-paying local authority areas. This has significantly reduced the living standards uplift from moving for work once housing costs are factored into the equation.

Lindsay Judge, senior policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation, said: “For young people in particular, there are real advantages to moving when it comes to trying new roles and developing skills and housing should not be a barrier that prevents them doing this.”