Benefits for young people

These pages look at how you can get income support, jobseeker's allowance, employment and support allowance, housing benefit and other types of cash help if you are a young person, especially if you are 16 or 17 years old.
 
See the later section for when someone can claim benefits for you.
    
Which benefits can you get?

The main benefits young people may be able to claim are:

• income support (IS) - this is only paid to people who don't have to sign-on as unemployed. e.g. some single parents, some people who are unfit for work who claimed it before 27th October 2008, some pupils and students and some carers
• jobseeker's allowance (JSA) - this is paid to unemployed people
• employment and support allowance (ESA) - this is paid to people who are not able to work due to ill-health and made their claim for benefit after 27 October 2008
• housing benefit (HB) - this is paid to people on benefits or low incomes to help with rent.
• education maintenance allowance (EMA) - this was paid to students from low to middle income families, aged between 16-18 in further education. They mostly stopped from July 2011 but there are replacement bursary and discretionary schemes that some students might benefit from.

Benefits are mainly paid by Jobcentre Plus. You will have a personal adviser at Jobcentre Plus who will talk to you about jobs and money.  The rules can be complicated - so if in doubt seek further advice from somewhere like Connexions.  

What if I am not entitled to any benefits?

If you are a student in higher education you may be entitled to student grants, loans or hardship payments.

If you are working you are entitled to the national minimum wage which means that from October 2010 you should receive £3.64 per hour if you are aged 16-17 or £4.92 if you are between 18-20

There is also an apprentice minimum wage of £2.50 per hour. This applies  to all apprentices aged 16-18 and those aged 19 or over in the first year of their apprenticeship.