This week an investigation into NEETs (young people not in education, employment or training) has dominated the news.
The author of the report, former cabinet minister Alan Milburn, warns: “We are at risk of a lost generation. That is a moral crisis.”
His research revealed that one in eight young people in the UK are NEETs, a number that is increasing each year. Milburn describes the crisis facing Britain as a “generational fault line” that requires an urgent solution.
This is such a crucial story that we’ve handed over our Sunday Read to Milburn. He’s also answered questions from you, our TRIP+ audience, below.
Why We’re Failing a Generation
By Alan Milburn
This is not a generation war. It is a test of whether Britain still believes in the future.
The public is ahead of politics on the future of young people. That is one of the clearest conclusions I draw from this review.
Across the country, people can see something has gone wrong. Parents see children struggling to get started. Grandparents see grandchildren unable to afford the lives they hoped for them. Teachers see pupils losing confidence. Employers see young applicants who want work but lack experience. Communities see young people drifting at the very age when they should be gaining independence and purpose.
One of the most damaging ideas in British politics is that the country is locked in a generation war. Young against old. Renters against homeowners. Graduates against pensioners. Those with assets against those without them. It is a neat story. It is also too simple.
Nearly one million young people in the UK are not in education, employment or training. If they formed a city, it would be the third largest in the country, bigger than Leeds, Glasgow or Cardiff.
That number should stop us in our tracks. But the harder question is why it has not done so before.
For 25 years, the proportion of young people who are NEET has fallen below 10 per cent only once. Britain has become used to a level of youth disengagement that should never have been accepted.
Research conducted by The Rest is Politics among you, the audience, for the recent The Gen Z Story suggests the country is more ready for change than Westminster sometimes assumes.
More than 74% of older respondents believe young people’s struggles are as serious as they claim. 84% worry about young people’s job prospects. More than 60% say they would support policies that reduced their own wealth if that improved outcomes for younger generations.
That matters. It cuts against the caricature of selfish older voters pulling up the ladder behind them. Most people do not look at their children or grandchildren and think they should have it harder than they did. They worry that they already do.
So this is not really a generation war. It is something more serious. It is a country asking whether the promise of progress still holds.
For much of the postwar period, Britain had an unwritten bargain. If you worked hard, got some qualifications, found a job and kept going, life would move forward. Not easily. Not equally. But forward. A job could lead to a home. A home could give you stability. Stability could give your children a better start than you had.
For this generation that contract is broken. Young people are doing what previous generations have told them to do. Stay in education. Apply for jobs. Look for training. Be flexible. Keep trying. And still the door does not open.
This is not just economic insecurity. It is a deeper loss of faith. A young person who cannot get started is not only missing a wage. They are missing routine, confidence, independence, social connection and the belief that tomorrow can be better than today.
That should concern everyone. A country that allows large numbers of young people to drift outside education and work stores up trouble for itself. It will pay later in poorer health, weaker growth, higher benefit spending, more pressure on public services and communities that feel the future is shrinking. Indeed, it is already doing so.
But the argument cannot only be about cost. It has to be about obligation. Older generations have a responsibility to ensure that the younger generation has the same opportunities they had. The country is ready for a more honest conversation about fairness between generations.
Older people built and sustained many of the institutions from which younger people should now benefit. Schools. The NHS. Local government. Apprenticeships. Colleges. Social housing. Public transport. Youth services. Some of those institutions have weakened. Some no longer do the job they were designed to do. Some have not adapted to the realities young people now face.
The question is not whether one generation should blame another. It is whether we are willing to rebuild the machinery of opportunity for the next one.
That will require more than sympathy. Sympathy is easy. Reform is harder.
Young people need more than income support if they are out of work. They need relationships, routines and routes back into participation.
Public services cannot simply be defended as they are if they are not changing young people’s lives. Employers cannot say young people are not work ready while offering fewer opportunities to become so. Government cannot keep intervening only after confidence has collapsed.
We have to move from rescue to prevention. Britain is too good at intervening late. We wait until a young person has stopped attending school, dropped out of college, developed a CV gap, entered the benefit system or reached crisis point. Then we ask why it is so expensive to help them.
A serious country would act earlier. It would notice the warning signs before the young person disappears. It would treat absence, poor mental health, weak attainment, care experience, caring responsibilities and disability as reasons to lean in, not reasons to wait. It would measure success not by how many appointments were held or forms processed, but by whether young people were learning, earning and building stable adult lives.
That is the shared national response this moment requires. Not a war between generations. Not another round of blame. Not a politics that tells young people to toughen up while ignoring the barriers in their way. And not a politics that assumes compassion means leaving people stuck.
Britain should not accept that. Nor, I believe, does the public want to. The polling shows something important. Many older people are ready to support a better deal for the young. That is not a weakness. It is national maturity.
The task now is to turn that concern into action. To rebuild the bridge between generations. To renew the promise that each generation should have the chance to do better than the last.
That promise was never just economic. It was moral. It said each generation had a responsibility to leave the next with more hope, not less. If we still believe that, then nearly one million young people outside education and work cannot remain a tolerated fact of national life. It has to become a shared national mission.
You can read the full report here.
Alan Milburn is a former health secretary and leading the independent review into young people and work.
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