Changes in the characteristics and skills of British youths between the mid-1980s and mid-2000s are evaluated using a method recently developed by Altonji et al. The main finding is that skills have increased over time in successive cohorts of young people. The improvement is, however, uneven, and those at the bottom end of the skills distribution have benefitted less than others. This implies, other things being equal, that the distribution of earnings will widen over the coming years.