Starmer vows action to avoid ‘lost generation’ of jobless youth

PRIME Minister Keir Starmer pledged to get more young Britons into work or education after a government-commissioned review found “whole-system failure” was driving youth unemployment to historically high levels. 

The study carried out by former Health Secretary Alan Milburn warned that the UK risked created a “lost generation” without action.

The number of young people not in education, employment or training, or NEETs, is due to hit 1.25 million within five years, up from about 1 million currently, according to the interim findings of the report. Milburn is due to propose potential solutions later this year.

“We need a truly national endeavor to deliver this new deal for young people,” Starmer wrote in the Times newspaper on Thursday (May 28), adding that the report showed that younger Britons wanted to work. “Together we can ensure every young person is included in our country’s highest aspirations.” 

The findings shine a light on the deepening youth jobs crisis in Britain, which has been spurred by factors including surging employment costs, worsening mental health and the rise of artificial intelligence reducing the number of entry-level roles.

According to Milburn’s review, 84 per cent of NEET young people surveyed wanted to get a job or training, but were unable to get one.

“We’ve got a chronic problem, it’s getting worse, not better’ Milburn told Bloomberg Radio. “We currently don’t have either a system or a plan to deal with it. What is needed is a radical reset of how the state works.”

Earlier this month, the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that just half of 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK were in pay-rolled work at the end of last year.

Starmer commissioned the study in November as his Labour administration sought to understand the drivers of rising youth unemployment.

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The plight of young people has fuelled dissatisfaction with the prime minister, who faces a potential leadership challenge after heavy losses for Labour in local elections earlier this month.

Young voters in particular have been turning to the populist left-wing Greens, with the right-wing Reform UK also siphoning off votes from mainstream parties.

But economists and business leaders have partially blamed the government for the crisis. Firms have scaled back recruitment, especially in sectors such as hospitality that traditionally employ younger workers, after increases to payroll taxes and the minimum wage last year.

A key driver of the trend is the decrease in vacancies aimed at young people, according to Milburn’s report.

It found entry-level jobs have long been in “sharp decline,” vacancies in hospitality — a traditional source of many roles for first-time workers — have halved in just four years, and apprenticeship starts have dropped by more than a third in a decade. 

“The first rung of the career ladder has thinned,” Milburn is due to say on Thursday. “For too many young people it is now simply out of reach. That places them in a hopeless catch-22 where employers ask for work experience but the opportunities for young people to gain it have narrowed or gone.”

Helen Whately, the shadow secretary for work and pensions for the Conservatives, said the opposition party would “reassess all” sickness benefits for “low-level mental health conditions.”

Whately argued on BBC Radio that people were getting “cash handouts” rather than being paid to work. “Too many people are being written off sick, particularly being written off for lower level mental health conditions, that is things like anxiety, mild depression and ADHD,” she said. BLOOMBERG