The findings of an interim report on young people and work from former Labour minister Alan Milburn is both bleak and frightening for all of us.
Former health secretary Alan Milburn speaks to the media on the publication of the interim Milburn Report into Young People and Work.(Image: Jeff Moore/PA Wire)
There are moments when a government report hits hard, not because it says something entirely new, but because it brings together what many have been seeing and saying for years and gives it the urgency it deserves.
The interim report on young people and work from former Labour minister Alan Milburn is one such document, and its findings are both bleak and frightening for all of us. Currently, nearly one million young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK are NEETs (not in education, employment or training), a figure so large that, if they formed a city, it would be two and a half times the size of Cardiff.
More troubling still, this is no longer simply a story of youth unemployment in the traditional sense, where young people are looking for work but unable to find it. The deeper problem now is detachment, with a growing proportion of young people neither wanting to work nor learn, nor actively seeking a job.
That distinction matters because unemployment can fluctuate with the economic cycle, whereas inactivity is harder to shift. Once a young person falls out of education, employment and training, especially for health-related reasons, the evidence suggests they can remain detached for years, with the report saying that almost eight in ten young people who became health-related inactive between 2017 and 2019 were still NEETs more than two years later.
The most striking shift is the role of health, particularly mental health. In 2015, just over a quarter of NEET young people reported a work-limiting health condition, but ten years later that had risen to 44 per cent.
Among disabled young people who are NEET, mental health has become a defining issue, with anxiety, depression, neurodevelopmental conditions and wider distress increasingly shaping whether a young person can make the transition from school or college into work.
This is not a soft excuse but a profound change in the conditions facing a generation that has grown up through austerity, a pandemic, social media saturation, insecure housing prospects and a labour market that often demands experience before it is willing to offer any.
Yet the report is careful not to place the blame on young people themselves, and one of its most important conclusions is that the caricature of a lazy or work-shy generation collapses when tested against the evidence. In a survey carried out for the review, 84% of NEET young people said they wanted to find a job, education or training, with many having applied for dozens of roles and heard nothing back.
However, they face automated recruitment systems, online portals, psychometric tests and entry-level jobs that somehow require prior experience. The old route of walking into a shop, speaking to a manager and being given a chance has been replaced by a colder, more remote hiring process.
The problem is that the UK lacks a coherent participation system for young people that is accountable for ensuring they move successfully from education into sustained employment or further learning.
Schools are judged largely on exam results, colleges are funded on numbers, retention and completion, and welfare replaces income but does not always build capability. Everyone sees part of the young person, but too often nobody owns the whole journey.
For Wales, this report should be taken particularly seriously, as our own NEET figures are already deeply worrying. The latest statistics show that 17% of 16- to 24-year-olds in Wales are not in education, employment or training, higher than the UK average. That is not a marginal issue but one affecting one in six young people, a massive social and economic problem, and, if we are honest, a failure of national ambition.
The Welsh dimension is complicated because responsibility is divided. Whilst education, health, social care, Careers Wales and local welfare assistance are devolved, social security, the National Minimum Wage and Jobcentre Plus remain largely reserved to Westminster, with employment support sitting awkwardly between the two governments.
This means that a young person at risk of becoming NEET in Wales may pass through school, college, Careers Wales, a local authority, the NHS, a Welsh Government employability programme, DWP, Jobcentre Plus and the voluntary sector. As a result, no single body is ultimately accountable for whether that young person gets into work, training or further education and stays there.
Worst still, nothing will change if we have individual programmes, however well-intentioned, operating as separate interventions rather than as part of a single participation system.
The economic consequences are clear, and as we all know, Wales already faces long-standing challenges in productivity, inactivity, skills and income. So, if we are serious about building stronger sectors such as advanced manufacturing, energy and tourism, we cannot afford to allow such a large share of the next generation to drift out of the labour market before their adult lives have properly begun.
So what should Wales do? First, we need to start earlier, as the warning signs are as clear as day – persistent absence, low attainment, additional learning needs, family poverty, caring responsibilities, poor mental health and limited exposure to work – yet little is done to address them properly.
Second, we need a far stronger bridge between school, college and work, with proper work experience, employer engagement and vocational pathways treated as central to education rather than peripheral extras. Third, mental health support must be linked to participation, not simply diagnosis and waiting lists and the question should not only be “what is wrong?” but “what support would help this young person take the next step?”
Above all, Wales needs a national youth participation strategy that is owned across government, local authorities, colleges, schools, health boards, employers and the voluntary sector, with one clear test of success: are more young people moving into sustained work, training or education?
Indeed, the real challenge is not that young people have given up on work, but that, too often, the system has given up on them, and for Wales, that should be when the findings of this impactful report turn into real action.
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