Why are so many young people not looking for work?
In a post-Covid hangover, a million ‘Neets’ youngsters are neither in work or education, despite employers being desperate to fill roles
In a busy youth centre in Bristol, Rozzy Amos is on the front line of a puzzling crisis that has been building behind closed doors the length and breadth of Britain since the Covid pandemic: the high numbers of young people not in work and, in many cases, not even looking for work.
Economists and statisticians are puzzling over how a country where employers are desperately short of workers can have, according to an analysis of data released last week from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), a million young people neither in full-time education nor employment.
Amos, head of strategy at the Prince’s Trust, said that she sees young people either struggling with their mental health, lacking self-confidence, or struggling to find the right job to suit their skills.
“We see lots of young people who have lost their confidence in looking for work — sometimes that’s because they don’t have the skill sets, often it’s because people are sending out so many CVs and they are not getting anything back,” she said.
The analysis of the official data by the Institute of Employment Studies suggests that some one in seven young people are not in employment, full-time education or training, the highest proportion since 2015.
Another way to measure young people’s engagement with work, the cohort known as Neets — 16 to 24-year-olds who are not in employment, education or training — also paints a worrying picture. This gauge, which includes young people who are in part-time education, stands at 12 per cent, its highest rate in eight years.
Nobody knows precisely why we have so many Neets. Are the young people Amos is seeing at the Prince’s Trust typical, or are there other reasons for these worryingly high numbers?
Health
“It’s clear that mental health is one of the drivers,” said Barry Fletcher, chief executive of Youth Futures Foundation, set up by the government in 2019 to improve opportunities for the nation’s youngsters.
This is borne out by data from the Prince’s Trust, which found that 32 per cent of Neets had been unable to apply for jobs in the past 12 months because of their mental health.
Research shows that young people are increasingly reporting symptoms of depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder. A three-year study by the Resolution Foundation, published last month, found that in 2021-22 one in three people aged 18 to 24 had reported issues with their mental health, up from one in four in 2000.
Another survey measuring the feelings of young people found changes before and after the pandemic. The Wellcome Trust’s Myriad (my resilience in adolescence) project has reported that young people who went through Covid lockdowns were more likely to experience social, emotional and behavioural difficulties than a group of students analysed before the pandemic.
And while Covid caused young people to feel anxious and lonely, the findings of a survey by the Prince’s Trust show that they remain unhappy even now. The cost of living crisis is another factor weighing on their emotions, according to its 2024 Youth Index survey. It found that 62 per cent of the young people it surveyed “always or often” felt stressed, and 55 per cent felt anxious.
But not having a job can itself perpetuate the situation. The Prince’s Trust Youth Index survey, which has been running for 15 years, found that 32 per cent of Neets are reporting mental health issues due to being out of work.
Other lockdown legacies
Another hangover from the pandemic has been the rising number of children not turning up at school. Consequently they are emerging into the workplace lacking the qualifications to get hired, and perhaps also missing the careers guidance that schools offer pupils as they prepare to leave.
Research by the House of Commons Library found that the absence rate at state-funded schools in England has risen from 4.5 per cent in 2016-17 to 7.3 per cent in 2022-23.
Another way that lockdowns damaged the current generation of school-leavers has been the way their communication and social skills have suffered from being stuck at home, doing lessons on computer screens. Some managers describe how new joiners can struggle to hold eye contact, or find it difficult interacting with new people in the workplace.
Part of that may also be because employers were prevented from offering students work experience during lockdowns.
Apprenticeships
There is some concern that apprenticeships designed for those who do not study A levels and take other further education routes are in decline.
James Reed of the eponymous recruitment agency Reed was so concerned by about the skills of young people that he commissioned research, along with the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, from the education think tank EDSK. It found that the proportion of 16-year-olds on apprenticeships had dropped from 7.8 per cent in 1999 to 2.8 per cent in 2022.
Since 2015, the number of entry-level apprenticeships for under-19s had fallen by 38 per cent to 77,510 in 2022-23. For those aged 19 to 24 the number was also down 38 per cent.
The government’s apprenticeship levy, paid by large employers to fund training, the report argued, encouraged employers to spend money up-skilling their existing workers via training courses. Of the learners who started an apprenticeship in 2021-22, only 26 per cent were on entry-level learning, compared with 53 per cent before the introduction of the levy. Apprenticeships aimed at higher learners — foundation degrees and higher — rose more than fivefold between 2014/5 and 2022/3.
The government’s apprenticeship levy, paid by large employers to fund training, has, in reality, encouraged employers to spend money up-skilling their existing workers via training courses. Of the learners who started an apprenticeship in 2021-22, only 26 per cent were on entry-level learning, compared with 53 per cent before the introduction of the levy.
Not the right job
Some analysts say the increasing number of school-leavers going to university rather than into apprenticeships is part of the problem. Research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that graduates are finding it difficult to land the jobs they studied for, while more than a third who are in work are overqualified for their roles.
Some researchers suggest many graduates are waiting to find a job that fits their qualifications rather than starting at the bottom of the ladder.
Geography also counts. ONS data shows that the highest number of Neets are in northeast England (17.2 per cent of all Neets) and Humber (14.3 per cent). The job markets in post-industrial areas such as these may not be offering the opportunities young people might want.
Darren Hankey, principal at Hartlepool College of Further Education, said that docks and the mines provided full-time work in the past, but those lost jobs had not been replaced by permanent roles. “Hartlepool is a wonderful place with lots of bright spots but there is a lot of poverty,” he said. “We’ve got one of the highest levels of insecure work. I wonder if that fuels where we are in terms of younger people opting not to work: the quality of work is probably not as good as it needs to be.”
Living at home
Fletcher at Youth Futures estimated that 350,000 of the 851,000 Neets are not claiming the £67.41 per week they would be receiving on universal credit. So, without work and without benefits, what do they do for money?
“A lot will be living with their parents,” said Fletcher.
ONS data shows that there was a 13.6 per cent rise in adult children living with their parents in 2021 compared with decade earlier. It said this was mainly caused by expensive housing but added: “Adult children were also more likely to be unemployed or providing unpaid care.”
Back in Bristol, Amos stressed: “We don’t ever meet young people who don’t want to work”. But she warned that young people are aware they are being labelled as lazy, workshy or “too picky”. Such attitudes can make matters worse, she said. “It doesn’t help that young people feel they’re the ones doing something wrong and not being part of society, but ultimately they’re pretty desperate to be connected with their community.”
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