Among those aged between 18 and 24, 17% believe they will be made redundant, and further 18% anticipate taking a pay cut or reduced hours.
More than a third (35%) of young people expect to either be made redundant or take a pay cut due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to comparethemarket.com's Household Financial Confidence Tracker.
Among those aged between 18 and 24, 17% believe they will be made redundant, and further 18% anticipate taking a pay cut or reduced hours.
A quarter (25%) of this age group say that they have already experienced a reduction in their take home pay since the pandemic began.
Among the general population, 12% expect to be made redundant and 14% believe they will have to take a pay cut or reduced hours.
Among the younger group, 21% struggled to pay bills last week, up from 18% the week before.
Nearly a quarter (24%) believe they will struggle in the coming weeks, up from 20% a week before.
This is the only age group whose financial anxiety is currently increasing.
Across all age groups and demographics, 16% said they found managing household finances difficult over the last seven days, down from 18% a week before.
Equally, 17% said they are worried about struggling to pay bills in the coming weeks, down from 20% a week prior.
Families with children living at home still demonstrate a higher level of financial anxiety, with 24% saying that they will struggle to meet financial obligations in the coming weeks – although this is a slight improvement from 26% the previous week.
Anna McEntee, product director at comparethemarket.com, said: “The proportion of people who are starting out in their careers who fear that they will be laid off in the near term or see their salary fall makes for grim reading.
"With so many people having to increase borrowing or take payment holidays to meet their household costs, we are potentially heading towards a crunch point where people – particularly younger people who have less by way of savings – are required to pay back money they owe with less income behind them.
"It will be incumbent on financial services providers to be as flexible as possible to help their customers through what promises to be an extremely challenging period of time.”
