The hairdressers keeping their profession alive

Taken from the spring 25 issue of THE FACE. Get your copy here

There is little the internet loves more than lumping young people into neat little boxes with a natty little label. That’s especially true when we consider the thing that creeps up on all of us at some point or another, as certain in life as death and taxes: getting a job. Over the last few years, and especially since – sorry – the onset of the pandemic, we’ve had ​“quiet quitting”, whereby Gen Z mentally throw in the towel by doing the bare minimum, disillusioned by a lack of work-life balance. Another term, ​“conscious unbossing”, suggests that young people have little desire to take on middle-management positions in the workplace, preferring ​“an individual route to advance their career” over telling their peers what to do – too high stress for too little financial reward.

Then there’s the NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training). This is a sort of anarchic stance taken by almost a million 16-to-24-year-olds in the UK, many of whom have largely opted out from, or been driven out of, the labour market. For them, there’s no incentive to devote their time to an employer in return for a paltry wage. These trends represent a clear shift in the way that young people are thinking about work. The way they are approaching it practically is evolving, too. UK-wide, there’s been a dip in the number of young people pursuing jobs that require getting their hands, if not dirty, then involved.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in hair salons and barbershops. Over the last decade, there has been a massive 70 per cent decline in applications for hairdressing apprenticeships. In 2023, just 1,520 students completed their training, down from 8,660 in 2015 – astonishingly low numbers for an industry that’s essentially AI-proof. Even more so when we consider how integral a fresh trim is to our lives. So, what gives? Skilled, high-paid work is often associated with degree-level jobs, with many teenagers still very much incentivised to go to college or university. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair sowed that seed back in 1999 when he pledged to get ​“50 per cent of young adults going into higher education”.

A generation on, the ripple effect of this New Labour rhetoric is being felt: the number of young people taking on apprenticeships after school has continued to plummet, as university applications rise – 2021 was an all-time high. That’s despite all we know about the endlessness of student debt – after the Tory-Lib Dem coalition tripled tuition fees in 2012 to £9,000 a year – and a ruthlessly competitive job market: in 2022, 26.4 per cent of graduates were in medium or low-skilled employment. Getting your lights rewired, sink unblocked, broadband fixed and certainly getting your hair cut are all things we take for granted. But tools and clippers are picking up dust.

Imogen, a 17-year-old trainee hairdresser from Northolt, West London, is one of the young people keeping her chosen trade alive. It’s the final week of January and we’re surrounded by semi-frightening mannequin heads in the locker room at Alan d, a hairdressing and barbering school in central London. Imogen studies here every Tuesday. The rest of the week, she works as a junior at a salon in Twickenham. ​“They say you qualify in two years, but they’ve been telling me I might be done in a year and a half,” she says excitedly, the sound of crinkling foil and chit-chat mingling in the background. January has, as usual, been a quiet month – people’s pre-Christmas wages aren’t quite stretching to luxuries such as haircuts.

But in a profession that requires constant client engagement, none more so than over the hectic festive period and its lead-up, Imogen is glad of the respite. ​“The social battery, oh my God! By the time the weekend comes around I don’t want to talk to anyone. I’m dead!” Imogen, who still lives with her parents, fell into hairdressing largely by chance. For the last couple of years, working in the salon wasn’t much more than a Saturday job. But over time she caught the bug and decided to pursue an apprenticeship. ​“My mum’s a nurse and I wanted to do that for a while, but I realised it wouldn’t work for me. I’m a visual person who learns by looking at things and trying them out.”

Her favourite thing about the job, aside from perfecting the bounciest of blow dries, is when customers remember her. ​“There’s an old lady – she melts my heart so much – who always asks for me to wash her hair because she enjoys catching up with me. It’s the sweetest thing when people look forward to seeing you and having a conversation with you at the basin.” Out of her group of friends, Imogen is the vocational outlier. All of them are taking up law – even her boyfriend and sister. ​“At my school, when people were talking about what they were gonna do after GCSEs, it was never hairdressing or an apprenticeship, especially if you didn’t already have a connection to those things. Maybe their parents are trying to push them. Mine have always been quite chill.”

Indeed, Imogen’s got no qualms about her own path veering away from those of her peers: at the end of the day, she’s 17 and she’s already earning. They, meanwhile, will soon be going into debt. ​“My sister spent all her money on accommodation and food when she went to uni. She was so broke – why would you want to do that?” Imogen asks incredulously, priding herself on having a savings account. The last thing she treated herself to? Flat Iron’s £14 steak. ​“A bargain, to be honest”.

Surviving on an apprenticeship wage when you don’t live at home isn’t for the faint of heart. Sarah, 22, grew up between London and New Zealand; their mum used to cut their hair in the kitchen as they watched attentively. For the last three years, they’ve been based in South London, having spent two of them turning their hairdressing hobby into a full-fledged career via the Blue Tit academy in the east of the city. ​“As an adult living in a houseshare in London and being financially independent, it was very hard to make things work at the beginning,” says Sarah, who picked up the scissors after dropping out of a law degree. ​“I was lucky to have some student loan money left over, and Universal Credit, and I had a job on the side. It wasn’t very glamorous!”

As of April 2024, £6.40 was the national minimum hourly wage for apprentices aged 16 to 19. This does go up incrementally, depending on your age and how long you’ve been working. From April this year, per Labour’s recent budget, the minimum wage for 18-to-20-year-olds will rise from £8.60 to £10. If you’ve completed the first year of your apprenticeship and are at least 19, this increase applies to you, too. You might think it’s outrageous that the minimum wage doesn’t start at 18, but it’s designed that way, to incentivise employers to hire younger people.

Although that sounds like good news for teenage apprentices, it’s perhaps less welcomed by those seeking to employ them. Edward Hemmings is the director of education at Alan d, the family business he’s been working in for 33 years and where we photographed this story. He sees the increase as ​“the final death knell” for hairdressing apprenticeships, applications for which had ​“massively” dwindled. ​“If you take on a 19-year-old apprentice and pay them £10 an hour, plus a pension contribution, it doesn’t work [for the employer’s bottom line],” he says. And if employers decide they don’t want to take young learners on in the first place, because of increased costs, ​“it’s a massive barrier to them entering the industry. You have to take time out to teach these kids, and [that means] they aren’t contributing to turnover, sadly.”

To be fair, the government has promised reform. The apprenticeship levy, a tax paid by UK employers to fund apprenticeship training, will soon be replaced by a ​“growth and skills levy” – allowing funding for things such as shorter apprenticeships (under the existing system, apprentice — ships must run for at least 12 months). Skills England, meanwhile, is a newly minted government agency which will consult on ​“how to reorder the training landscape”, as per the Financial Times. ​“It’s so dependent on [whether you live at home] and what your financial situation is getting into hairdressing,” says Sarah. For their part, at least, this job has meant short-term sacrifice for long-term gain. An investment, if you will.

For others, the challenges of learning the trade have been eclipsed by the options hairdressing gives them. You can work in a salon, be self-employed and work from home, or from others’ homes. You can choose your hours. It’s a portable skill you can take with you if you go travelling. You can be a business person, and you get to be creative. You can get involved in fashion or serve your community. It is, fundamentally, a world of tolerance and inclusion, of people as diverse as their hairstyles. ​“I love that combination,” says Sarah. ​“There’s a collaborative element. You get to work with queer people and it doesn’t feel as serious as other jobs. I can be extroverted when I need to be and I’m not hiding behind a screen doing something remote.”

As a queer person, Sarah also sees their job as a kind of refuge. ​“I’m aware of the fact that I fall under certain brackets that are, um, controversial in some spaces,” they add. ​“In a larger sense, I’m not super excited about things. But I’m always gonna be hopeful because there will always be people I align with and who represent how I feel. The hair industry is pretty good with that.

Bobby is a barbering apprentice from Westfield, a village in East Sussex. For him, the hair business is a family affair: his mum and uncle were both barbers in Hastings. At 17, he’s come a long way from messing around in the piles of clippings on the shop floor when he was a kid. Having recently completed a 13-week course at the London School of Barbering, he’s been busy working in three barbershops and one salon. Next stop, hairdressing. ​“I always preferred the idea of being the one doing the cutting, not the other way around. But I actually hated getting mine cut back then,” he admits, running his hands through his tousled hair. ​“I would refuse to let anyone do it except my mum, and she still does it to this day.”

Mum, though now retired from hairdressing, is still in the haircare business: she became a dog groomer. Bobby’s passion for the whole thing is palpable. ​“I worked with my granddad one summer doing landscaping and I hated it. Now I wake up and think: ​‘I get to go to the shop today, I get to do my clients, I get to hear new stories.’ That’s what inspires me to do this.” If anything, what he finds most challenging on the job is when punters aren’t up for a chat. His hair icon? A young Keanu Reeves, Point Break era. ​“Quite long, kind of slicked back, sort of the old Leonardo DiCaprio-type look. It’s a really nice haircut, that. I reckon it’ll come back into fashion.”

From the beginning, money has been a big motivator for Bobby – he’s even pulled back from skateboarding in his free time in case he hurts his wrists and has to take time off. Have any of his friends taken up apprenticeships this year? ​“I haven’t heard of a single one. All my mates are either in college or unemployed. Everyone wants to get qualifications, but that was never really me. I wanted to get my head down straight away.”

​“I feel like a lot of kids my age slack off, to be honest,” he continues. ​“Some people I know just sit indoors playing Call of Duty all day. It’s quite bad. My age group, with lockdown and stuff, it hurt the will to work – you weren’t at school, there was nothing to do. I think we still need to get through that.” Edward Hemming suggests the sharp drop in applications for hairdressing apprenticeships has been shaped by the post-pandemic playing field. ​“We were one of the businesses that shut down completely. Things really suffered,” he says. ​“After the pandemic, a lot of stylists decided they were going to work from home or convert their houses into salons, which took business away from [brick and mortar] salons.

“Now, 70 per cent of hairdressers are self-employed or rent a chair. With that in mind, you can’t take on an apprentice because they have to be on a payroll. This makes it much harder for them to find somewhere to train.” It’s a double whammy, then: a shrinking talent pool met with shrinking opportunities. Without the pandemic, 22-year-old Morgan, a time-served Blue Tit alumna from Leytonstone, East London, might not have found her way into the job at all.

Four years ago, she was deeply committed to playing football, going as far as trialling for the Women’s Super League. ​“It got too much,” she says. ​“I started school at 9am but was there at 6am to practice. And again after school.” During lockdown, Morgan shaved her head with some clippers bought from Amazon and her friends took notice. Now, she sports a peroxide pixie cut, complete with nose and eyebrow piercings. ​“I started doing [cuts] on my mates and realised: OK, this is quite fun, actually.” Apprenticeship freshly completed, Morgan is about to hit the floor. First, she’s got to complete what’s known in the trade as vardering, an intensive process that’ll see her style 100 clients in six weeks – and you have to find all the punters yourself. Morgan is nothing if not up for the challenge, though: ​“Final push!” ​“I’ve never been a traditional education, sit-down-and-learn sort of girl,” she adds. ​“I took a year out before this, working in pubs, figuring it all out. When I started, I didn’t know how to cut a straight line. Now, I’m not looking back.”

Photographer’s Assistant Ellie Hoffman