Abstract This article arises from surveys between 1987 and 1989 among representative samples of 16–20 year olds in Swindon and Liverpool. The young people in the former town ran the lower risk of unemployment, had the higher paying jobs and higher personal incomes on average, and, therefore, the higher levels of leisure spending. Overall, however, the young people in Liverpool had the higher rates of participation in leisure activities. Within each area the young people with jobs had higher rates of leisure participation than the unemployed but this intra-area difference was not mirrored neatly at the inter-area level. The authors discuss how young people in a high unemployment city such as Liverpool were able to maintain relatively high overall levels of leisure activity by drawing upon family resources, forgoing particularly expensive activities and purchases, and scaling down their spending on other leisure goods and occasions. The authors also discuss the ways in which the resilience of leisure among the age group and within the areas most affected by high unemployment can help to explain the absence of a strong, radical socio-political response to the predicament.