The kids aren’t alright 🧠

We have a deeply entrenched problem that is getting worse and a system that has been trying but failing to deal with it. It is a structural breakdown with profound consequences for economic performance, fiscal sustainability and social cohesion. — Alan Milburn, The Access to Work Review interim report, 2026 

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Millennials thought they had it bad. But when it comes to jobs, the cohort next to go over the top, Gen Z, are facing a world of pain even the most hardened millennial snowflake would balk at. 

The numbers are staggering. In January to March 2026, 1.01 million 16-to-24-year-olds in the UK were not in education, employment or training (NEET). That is 13.5% of that demographic, up from 12.5% a year earlier.

Around 400,000 were unemployed and 613,000 were economically inactive, meaning they were not just out of work but not looking for work either. Among those surveyed, 84% said they wanted to find a job, education, or training.

Competitive salary

The cost of this wasted potential is £125bn a year, more than England spends on education. Today’s 24-year-old NEETs who have never had a job could lose up to £300,000 in lifetime earnings, even if they later re-enter the labour market.

Looking for work is now often a full-time job in itself. Plucky job hunters face a number of increasingly Kafka-esque hurdles. Hundreds of applications, dozens or even hundreds of applicants for each opening, repeated form-filling, video interviews, algorithmic, automated screening and then… radio silence. 

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Dropping last week, former Health Secretary, Alan Milburn’s interim report on young people and work is trying to get to the bottom of why Britain’s youth are struggling. He says, “Fundamental and far-reaching reform is needed. Britain is confronting a systemic failure at the point where a generation is supposed to transition into adulthood.”

Milburn argues we rely on a welfare state that actively “exacerbates inactivity”, focusing entirely on processing claims and managing symptoms. What young people need is a total system reset, a working state, one designed from the ground up that stitches together health and education, and actively pulls people into work.

Fast-paced, dynamic environment

First jobs are where people learn how work works. The proportion of students aged 16-to-17 doing any paid work has fallen from 35% in 2006 to 19% today. Six in 10 young people who are NEET have never had a job, up from four in 10 in 2005.

The rise of AI isn't helping. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the technology could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs by 2030. And research by King’s College London’s Policy Institute suggested 34% of university students think AI will eliminate jobs fast enough to cause civil unrest.

The education system isn't bridging the gap either. Just under half of 18-to-24-year-olds, and 36% of those who are NEET, agreed they felt ready for work when they left education. Only 35% of young people felt confident they had relevant work experience.

We’ll keep your CV on file

Half of all youth employment is concentrated in just three sectors: wholesale and retail, hospitality and food services, and health and social care. There were 8,000 fewer retail outlets on high streets in 2025 than in 2019. Hospitality vacancies have fallen by around half in four years.

Over recent decades, the bottom rungs of the career ladder have been sawn off, leaving 1.6 million fewer low- and medium-skilled entry jobs. The old, low-stakes Saturday job is in terminal freefall.

Entry-level, two years’ experience required

One major problem is many junior jobs now ask for previous experience. Taking on inexperienced young people is no small task. Many employers are just not up to it. Managers must train and support them, and accept early mistakes. In a tight business environment, like the one we face today, that can feel like a cost rather than an investment. The NEET problem is exacerbated by Britain’s poor track record of middling management. 

Apprenticeship starts for young people have declined by over 35% over the last decade. Milburn argues the Apprenticeship Levy has been leant on too often by employers upskilling existing white-collar managers, rather than creating genuine, entry-level pathways for school leavers.

Invested in your growth

The economic math here is completely upside down. Britain consistently underinvests in the young people who already live here, and then turns to immigration to plug critical gaps in social care, hospitality, and retail. 

Migrant workers are not to blame. They are filling vacancies the economy needs, often under less-than-ideal conditions. But nothing highlights Britain’s lack of joined-up thinking quite like importing labour from across the globe while a million homegrown youngsters are left on the bench.

Tell us about a time you showed resilience

Most of today’s 16-to-24-year-olds were aged 11-to-18 during Covid, and experienced severe disruption to their education and social development. Psychological distress among 18-to-24-year-olds had almost doubled by April 2023 compared with 2017/18.

The proportion of young people who are NEET due to a health condition has increased by 70% over the past decade. Of those who became NEET due to illness between 2017 and 2019, almost eight in ten were still NEET more than two years later.

In 2024/25, 45% of young people who are NEET reported having a disability, up from 21.1% in 2013/14. Among disabled NEET young people, the share citing mental health as their main health problem has nearly doubled, from 24.3% in 2011 to 42.6% in 2025.

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No single institution owns the transition from youth to work. There’s no Department for Getting your Foot In The Door. For every £1 spent helping a young person find or train for work, around £25 was spent on benefits.

The vast majority of that £25 is swallowed up by housing support to cover insane rents, and a massive surge in health and disability claims, all driven by a generation experiencing unprecedented levels of psychological distress and long-term illness. Can you blame them?

In England in 2023/24, around 314,000 18-to-24-year-olds were neither in work nor in education and were not receiving benefits. The report calls them “out of work and out of sight”. The welfare system reaches only around one in five NEET young people in England. Around half are entirely hidden because they are not claiming benefits. 

Must be a self-starter

The consequence of the broken social contract is a quiet, ongoing exodus. British emigration has been broadly stable of late, with 246,000 British nationals leaving long-term in the year to December 2025. Around two-thirds of British emigrants in the year to March 2025 were aged 16 to 34. 

But look at the direction of travel: among 16- to 34-year-olds, around 75,000 more British nationals left than arrived in 2025, and that gap has grown every year since 2022.

Not the right culture fit

Is Britain even up to the job? Many have lost faith in the power of politics to drive change. Disillusionment is rife. Some see this as an explanation for the rise of populist leaders throughout the world, not least in the UK.

The Resolution Foundation has warned millennials may become the first generation to be worse off than their parents. The outlook for Gen Z is no better. The Milburn report warns that if we continue as we are, the youth NEET rate will climb to an unprecedented one-in-six within five years, with 1.25 million NEETs by the turn of the decade.

We’ve decided not to progress

Whether it’s Brexit, an act of economic self-harm backed mostly by older voters and inherited by a generation that opposed it, or the triple lock, housing, austerity, or tuition fees, again and again, Britain shields John and Margaret while asking their children and grandchildren to pick up the tab. They don’t call them the Me Generation for nothing.

The fact is, one million lost young people is a total, abject society-wide failure. A sign, if there ever was one, that Britain is broken. Without bold action, a million cynical, economically insecure citizens will look for answers elsewhere. If governments continue to alienate the younger generation, the country faces a bleak future, indeed.