Research and analysis

Response to Employment Data Lab's analysis: the Social Mobility Foundation

Published 19 November 2025

Our organisation

At the Social Mobility Foundation, we are working towards a society where people from all social backgrounds can thrive in education and the workplace, and all young people can explore their talents. Because we know that when we foster the potential of all our young people, we lift up every member of our communities.  

At the SMF, we know that postcode doesn’t define your potential. But, in the UK, we have one of the lowest rates of social mobility across Europe, meaning young people are being locked out of their dream careers because of where they grew up or went to school.  

Through our regional hubs, strong employer partnerships and award-winning volunteer networks, we create social mobility in three ways:   

• Directly supporting over 4,000 16–25-year-olds from lower socioeconomic backgrounds per year through our Aspiring Professionals Programme, offering practical support in building skills, confidence and connections, ultimately raising aspirations.  

• We operate the UK’s only Social Mobility Employer Index, the leading authority on employer-led social mobility. Each employer who joins becomes a leader in building inclusive workplaces for all. In 2025, 140 organisations entered the Index, which supports employers to turn their values into action, building more inclusive workplaces where potential comes first.   

• Advocating for social mobility issues and amplifying the voices of young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.   

We walk alongside our young people every step of the way, from education all the way to university, becoming a part of their journeys as we turn opportunity into a reality.

Our response to the analysis

We are delighted that Employment Data Lab’s findings show such a positive impact for the young people on our Programme. The longer-term 10-year analysis shows an increase in average cumulative earnings of at least £8,000 for our students (and over £22,000 at the upper end of the estimate – Table 7). This represents almost £12million (and up to £32million) of combined earnings impact across the cohort of 1,453 students who formed part of the analysis. Even earlier in their careers, at seven years after joining us, we see a valuable annual salary increase of between £1,700 and £3,000 for our graduates (Table 1). It is encouraging to see this salary benefit growing wider as our graduates progress through the first few years of their working lives. 

Despite the primary focus of our Aspiring Professionals Programme being to support students into highly-skilled employment - which we regrettably weren’t able to explore as part of the analysis - the demonstrated earning increases strongly suggest that we are also achieving this outcome. 

Our Programme intermediate outcome is centred on university access; we are similarly pleased to see students enrolling and subsequently obtaining degrees from Russell Group universities at higher rates than the comparison group (Table 3). Although in recent years we have broadened our university access success measure to include all ‘higher-tariff’ universities as defined by UCAS, we are glad to see that the Programme appears to be supporting students to access this subset of providers (Russell Group universities form a significant portion of the ‘higher-tariff’ group). We know that our students are academically more than capable of achieving places at competitive universities and we are glad that the APP is giving them that extra ‘nudge’ to not only access, but also to progress at more competitive education providers. 

In terms of our demographic reach, we are encouraged to see that our students represent a higher average IDACI score than the national average (35% vs 17.1% respectively). This suggests that we are helping bring the right support to students who need it most. Sadly, again due to the limitations of the current analysis, a significant portion of our students from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are not represented. As a national organisation, we hope that future analysis can include the outcomes of students in all four nations. 

Unfortunately, and in contrast to the more positive findings of the report, disparities in the data shown in Table 13 suggest that our students are still facing many other systemic biases relating to their identity as they progress in their careers (such as the disparities in earnings by ethnicity, gender, and geographical location).  

We thank the Employment Data Lab and the Department for Work and Pensions for the support they have provided through this research. For the SMF to have access to analysis of this calibre, regardless of the findings, is immensely helpful towards understanding and demonstrating the impact that we have for our students.