This is news to some:

But while we know work is drying up, there is much we don’t know about who is being affected. The data we usually rely on doesn’t become available at the pace of the crisis, but there is some evidence. A timely survey conducted by academics in Britain and Switzerland showed that the young and low earners are hit hardest. Lower earners have been twice as likely to lose their jobs as high earners, while 12% of under-30s report being unemployed because of this crisis, against 6% of those aged 40-55.

Policymakers wishing to see us through this crisis need to recognise that we face a jobs catastrophe, but one that has arrived sooner for some than others.

It’s not news to us. For of course it’s the point we have been making about the minimum wage all these years. Those afflicted by any squeeze on the labour market are going to be those most tenuously attached to it, the young, the untrained, the unproductive.

They are, as here, going to be the first laid off in times of trouble. They are also the first who won’t be hired as the price of labour is forced up above the market clearing rate. Precisely why the correct minimum wage is £0 an hour, anything higher discriminates against the very people who need to get a job in order to progress in life.