In March 2021, the Office for National Statistics produced statistics showing that unemployment for young black people aged 16–24 had increased from 24.5% in the period October-December 2019 to 41.6% over the same period in 2020, while unemployment for young white people increased from 10.1% to 12.4%.27 These statistics were an ‘ad-hoc’ release, and are not published on a regular basis. The Department agreed that the findings were “stark”, but was not able to explain such an uneven unemployment impact on different ethnic groups. The Permanent Secretary said that “there were different groups, different demographic groups, different ethnic groups and different communities in the same group. I know there are lots of different issues going on. I think you can generalise on some issues around aspiration, barriers and unconscious bias. There are all sorts of things going on”.28