With increasing numbers of young people aged 18-25 (5.9 million in 2003 compared to 5.7 million in 1997), the market for products and services aimed at this group has continued to thrive, helped by the fact that the period during which people are ‘young, free and single’ has become longer.

This report focuses on those in the ‘thresholder’ age group, looking at their lifestyles, attitudes and spending habits, and also at the differences between those who left school without entering Higher Education and those who are students or graduates. It also highlights how young people can be classified into a number of types according to their employment choices and attitudes towards work. Each type can be found among both graduates and non-graduates and include:

Drifters: find it hard to settle to a single job or career; this may be an extension of the sense of indecision, inertia and demotivation which makes educational choices difficult.

Steady Climbers: have stayed with their present company for at least two years, feel they have made progress; mostly male non-graduates.

Career-minded: mostly graduates, with a definite career in mind, usually (but not exclusively) connected with their degree subject. May have found it hard to get a career opening, but are now following a plan, prepared to move companies in order to do so.

Idealists: characterised by their determination to pursue a particular career, even though the odds may be stacked against them, and they may have to make sacrifices in order to do so; includes both graduates and non-graduates. May be doing mundane jobs to make ends meet while pursuing career goals.

Entrepreneurs: have ambitions to work for themselves – but hedging their bets by starting in a small way while remaining employed in other occupations.

Offering countless opportunities to evaluate the relevance of your products or services to these consumers, this report draws from exclusive findings taken from a series of focus groups carried out by Mintel. The result is a unique insight into a stage in consumers’ lives when lifestyles can change considerably, and when there are, in theory at least, many choices open to them, and decisions to be made which can affect the direction of their lives.