YOUNG employees and low earners are the most likely to be affected by business closures due to the coronavirus lockdown, researchers have found.

A study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) discovered that a "remarkable concentration" of workers under 25, those earning the lowest wages and women are employed in sectors that have shut down in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Economists said the results give rise to "serious worries" about the longer-term effect of the crisis on young people and inequality.

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Researchers examined which workers would be most exposed to sector shutdowns during the coronavirus crisis, with 15 per cent of employees in the UK working in one of those sectors, which include retail, travel, hospitality and childcare.

The study revealed that the largest disparity in affected workers was by earnings, with those with the lowest earnings nearly seven times more likely to work in shutdown sectors than those with the highest earnings.

The authors found that 34 per cent of employees in the bottom tenth of the earnings distribution worked in areas directly affected by the lockdown, compared with just five per cent of those in the top tenth.

Researchers also found a large disparity by age, with 30 per cent of workers under the age of 25 employed in those sectors, compared with 13 per cent of those aged 25 and over.

They said this means the lockdown is likely to hit younger workers the hardest, being nearly two-and-a-half times more likely to work in a shutdown area.

The authors said Covid-19 was also likely to have a bigger effect on women's earnings because of a disproportionate amount of women working in retail and hospitality, with 17 per cent of female employees working in shutdown sectors compared with 13 per cent of men.

However, it was also found that the majority of the affected younger workers and lower earners live with parents, or other household members, whose earnings are not directly affected by the lockdown.

In both cases, just 16 per cent of total household earnings are drawn from the affected sectors, the study found.

Xiaowei Xu, a senior research economist at the IFS and an author of the study, said: "There is a remarkable concentration of younger and lower paid workers in the sectors most affected by the current lockdown.

"Women are also more likely to be affected than men.

"Fortunately, in the short run, many will have the cushion of the incomes of parents or other household members.

"But for the longer term, there must be serious worries about the effect of this crisis on the young especially and on inequality more generally."