The Condition of Young People: Part 1

June 2026

A crucial context for open youth work’s face-to-face practice is what, in a chapter in my last book, I labelled ‘The Condition of Young People’.[1] In a series of posts in the coming months I will seek to update this material, starting below with one focused on young people’s place and role in the labour market.

Young People and Work

Rising levels of youth unemployment

During the boom years of the 1950’s and 1960’s a majority of young people left school at the end of compulsory education and followed well-trodden routes into the labour market, albeit highly stratified according to social class and gender… During this period, with a distinctive youth labour market and high levels of employment, school leavers had little difficulty in securing stable forms of employment. [2]

By 2024 those ‘boom years’ were long gone. What young people were then experiencing were ongoing rises in unemployment, resulting in more and more of them having to struggle – often unsuccessfully – to embed themselves in the labour market.

Though in 2022 the returns of the Social Mobility Commission (SMC) had suggested that levels of youth unemployment were falling[3], by the middle of 2024 figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) were revealing that these were at their highest in more than three years. Between May and July that year nearly 600,000 16-24 year olds were found to be without a job – up by 51,000 on the previous year – with the ONS suggesting a possible recent longer-term trend in employers’ preference for older workers.[4]

Though into 2026 estimates of how many young people were actually unemployed varied according to the source, the overall picture was one of significant continuing increases. According to updated ONS findings, for example, released in February 2026:[5]

In the twelve months after December 2024 the number of unemployed 18-24 year olds rose from 495,000 to 575,000 and of 16-17 year olds from 146,000 to 164,000.

In the three months of October-to-December 2025 739,000 16-24 year olds were out of work – nearly 100,000 more than the 641,000 recorded in the corresponding period in 2024.

Though numbers for 16-17 year olds fell over the last three months of 2025, for 18-24 year olds they increased in every month after May-to-July 2025.

Other related findings included[6]:

Department of Education (DoE) figures released in March 2026 which put the number of 16-24 year olds not in education, employment of training (NEET) at 800,000.

A Labour Force Survey which estimated that in England alone between October and December 2025 this figure could have been even higher – at nearly 840,000. Though this suggested a 0.3 per cent fall in the overall proportion of young people who were NEET, their actual number went up by 3,000 on the same period a year earlier, resulting in the UK having ‘wealthy Europe’s’ third highest NEETs rate.[7]

Over a five year period up to November 2025 more that 50 per cent more young people had thus been claiming Universal Credit health and employment support.[8]

A possible cause of ‘NEET-ness’…

One particularly striking Education Policy Institute (EPI) finding on why a young person might end up ‘NEET’ was that at least one previous suspension from secondary school could potentially have significant consequences for a young person’s employment prospects.[9] By the time they were 24, for example, 16 per cent of those who had been suspended emerged as a twice as likely to be NEET as their peers overall. They were also less likely to have achieved an A-level qualification or to have gone onto higher education than those who had not been suspended. As, post-pandemic, behaviour problems increased, government statistics revealed that these suspensions had in 2022-23 reached a record level of 787,000.

… and its impacts

One positive finding of the 2023 Prince’s Trust ‘Youth Index’ survey was that more than two-thirds of the over 2,300 UK 16-25 year olds who responded said they remained determined to achieve their goals in life.[10] For many young people, however, there were significant damaging effects, both immediate and long-term, of negotiating the experience of being NEET. The Chief Executive of the mentoring charity One Degree captured these in a personalised way when he described young people’s loss as not necessarily of ambition but of self-belief:

(W)hen a young person says: “I don’t know what to do with my life,” what they often mean is something far more painful: “I’m not sure I believe I can.”’[11]

Indeed, questions were even being raised about whether the very nature of ‘adolescence’ was changing, with Gaby Hinsliff suggesting in the Guardian that this stage in life was becoming ‘a seemingly more insular, home-based, slower way of growing up, persisting in some cases well into the later teens and early 20s’.[12]

By then the findings of the Prince’s Trust Index (referenced above) had illustrated in more statistical ways how young people’s struggles to get and keep a job were impacting on them and their lives:

48 per cent said they were worried that they wouldn’t have the right skills and qualifications for getting work in the future and 57 per cent that they wouldn’t have the right experience;

21 per cent had at some point missed going to school or to work;

12 per cent had failed to go to a job interview;

10 per cent of NEETs had left a job in the previous year – compared to 4 per cent of their peers;

41 per cent said were feeling worthless because they weren’t in paid work;

7 per cent who’d been on free meals at school had left education – compared to 2 per cent of their peers;

35 per cent were concerned that their mental health would get in the way of achieving their career ambitions – something which in turn could make their mental health worse;

29 per cent worried that they wouldn’t get employer support for these mental health problems;

10 per cent had had to turn down a job because of the costs.

The Youth Index report thus concluded that, as well as having a ‘crippling impact’ on an individual’s employment prospects, being NEET was ‘threatening the aspirations of an entire generation’.[13] All of which prompted the Prince’s Trust’s chief executive to label what these young people were experiencing ‘a deeply concerning trap’ – explained as ‘a vicious cycle where poor mental health is having a negative impact on young  people’s work, yet being unemployed has a negative impact on their wellbeing’.

A YouGov survey, conducted at about the same time as the Youth Index research and reporting in March 2024[14] had sought to understand this evidence in more personalised ways by asking 1001 14-17 year olds to imagine their lives at the age of 30. In response:

5 per cent thought this would be worse than that of the previous generation;

19 per cent believed they wouldn’t have enough money to live comfortably;

9 per cent said they felt ‘hopeless’ about their future; and

10 per cent assumed they wouldn’t be able to change this.

The potentially lasting ‘scarring effects’ of being NEET – particularly on young people’s finances and their physical health – were highlighted, too, by research which, looking retrospectively at the 1970 British Cohort Study, linked its 8,000 participants’ past teenage NEET experience with their current economic status at the age of 51.[15] Reporting in April 2026, its analysis found that those who as young people had been persistently NEET were ‘six times as likely to be out of work in midlife than those who were never Neet in early adulthood’ and ‘three times as likely to report being in poor health’.

Evidence had by then also emerged of the embedded structural factors which – though often still being downplayed by commentators as mere ‘disadvantages’ – continued to have significant shaping impacts on young people’s lives overall. In relation to gender, for example, a Centre for Social Justice report[16] published in early 2025 indicated that men aged 16-24 had a higher risk of being unemployed than women and, if working full-time, were being paid 9 per cent less. However, as men’s earnings were ‘almost completely unaffected by parenthood’, over their lifetime they were still likely to be paid significantly more than women, with women’s earnings seven years after having their first child falling on average to less than half those of men.

A survey of 1,000 secondary school students carried out by the education charity Teach First[17], published in late 2025, pointed also to class differences within the overall youth cohorts. Twenty six per cent of the poorer pupils who responded said they felt they hadn’t got access to good work experience opportunities and one in five that they didn’t have access to support for ‘additional’ or mental health needs. White working class students reported the highest levels of these barriers (29 per cent and 28 per cent respectively).

The Teach First report also included one finding on class differences of particular significance for youth workers: that, compared to 10 per cent of ‘more privileged students’, 17 per cent of the young people from ‘disadvantaged’ backgrounds believed they were missing out on ‘good enrichment opportunities, such as clubs, trips, and sports’. This prompted Teach First’s Chief Executive James Troop to comment:

Too many young people from disadvantaged backgrounds feel locked out of their future before they’ve even left school – not because they lack ambition, but because they face greater barriers to opportunities.

The updated findings from the YouGov survey in January 2026[18] added to the evidence on young people’s fears for their employment prospects. Seventy three per cent of its 4097 respondents felt ‘acutely anxious’ about their future careers and the availability of enough jobs. By then, too, the proportion of young people worried about the impact of artificial intelligence on their job security had reached 59 per cent – up 10 per cent in the previous year. Sixty per cent also said they felt unprepared for employment, with 64 per cent judging as insecure most of the entry-level roles available to them.

Two other significant findings had by then emerged from a Resolution Foundation report published in early 2024: that the number of under-24 year olds on long-term sick had doubled in a decade, and that more people in their early 20s were without work than those in their 40s.[19] This was followed a month later by a Nuffield Foundation study focused on factors with potentially wider and more long-term consequences for young people’s employment prospects. It for example predicted that, as children were by then likely to achieve the worst exam results in decades, they could be facing a lifetime of lower earnings.[20] Exacerbated again by cost of living increases ‘threatening the aspirations of a whole generation’, one YouGov survey had also confirmed that a third of the 2,239 young people who responded said they couldn’t afford to get the qualifications they needed to get the job they wanted, with almost 10 per cent turning down a job because of the costs involved.[21]

By early 2025 a new ‘Future Minds’ campaign supported by four key youth mental health charities was also estimating that one immediate financial effect of the mental health crisis alone would be that young people in the UK would lose more than £1 trillion of earnings over their lifetime.[22]

Policy responses

The rising levels of youth unemployment together with young people’s worries about their place in the labour market prompted some wider policy responses. In October 2025, for example, the Resolution Foundation urged the government to reconsider its proposal to abolish what it called the ‘discriminatory youth rates for the minimum wage’ because of concerns that under 21 year olds would then be ‘priced out’ of entry level jobs.[23] By then evidence had emerged that this minimum wage requirement, in combination with the 1.5 per cent increase in employers’ national insurance contributions from April 2025, were indeed prompting companies’ reluctance [24] to hire young people.[25] Into 2026 the government commitment was thus to align the national minimum wage for people aged 18 to 20 years old with the National Living Wage.

Following an acknowledgement by Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall that the government had a ‘mountain to climb’ to bring down youth unemployment numbers[26], it announced plans in December 2025 to introduce a ‘youth guarantee’.[27] Though coming with ‘sanctions’ for those who didn’t engage, this offered a six-month paid placement to eligible 18-21 year olds who had been on universal credit and looking for work for 18 months, helping to open up 350,000 new training and workplace opportunities. It was followed in March by a £1 billion ‘New Deal’ aimed particularly at extending the Jobs Guarantee scheme[28] to offer a guaranteed fully subsidised six-month paid job of 25-hours-a-week for 18-21 year olds who were on universal credit and had been unemployed for 18 months. A key overall long-term aim here was also to incentivise employers to create 200,000 jobs for NEET young people and to subsidise the cost of training for 18-24 year olds in jobs where there was a shortage of workers.

A particularly significant government initiative was the Department of Work and Pensions’ announcement the previous November of an ‘Enquiry’ into ‘Young People and Work’, led by former Labour minister Alan Milburn.[29] In February 2026 Milburn labelled the situation facing young people a ‘downward escalator’ caused by poor health, poor education and being caught up in the benefit system.[30] The following month he also suggested that mayors in England have greater powers to tackle the youth unemployment crisis and – with nearly one million NEETs in the north and Midlands – avoid the ‘long-term scarring’ impacts on regions outside London.[31]

An ‘Call for Evidence’ paper released on 23 December 2025[32] had by then explained the Enquiry’s three aims as:

To understand ‘the drivers’ of the increased numbers of NEETs.

To ‘investigate the root causes of the rise in the economic inactivity among disabled young people and those with mental health conditions’.

To make policy-focused recommendations for increasing young people’s

Starting from a definition of ‘economically inactive’ as NEETs ‘not looking for and able to start work’, the Enquiry was planned to have ‘two distinctive phases’:

‘A discovery phase …(to) ‘provide a diagnosis on the increase in (NEET) young people, including those who are disabled and have ‘a health condition’.

‘A solution phase… (to) identify potential areas for reform’.

The ‘Call for Evidence’ paper also explained that one rationale for the Enquiry was that the impacts of being denied the opportunity of getting ‘good work’ could last a lifetime for young people, resulting in ‘more that £1million in lost earnings’. Describing this as ‘a long-running structural challenge which has worsened in recent years’, the paper also included youth unemployment statistics which it described as able to ‘fill Wembley Stadium more than 10 times over’. It highlighted that in the UK the proportion of NEETs was ‘around double those of Japan or Ireland and 3 times the rate of the Netherlands’ – confirming wider evidence that, as its youth jobs rate fell to a 10-year low, the UK was falling behind other advanced economies.[33]

In December 2025 the NYA made a specific response to the Enquiry by writing directly to Milburn to ‘urge him to consider the role of youth workers in supporting (NEET) young people’.[34] With, according to NYA, ‘youth work … under-recognised in NEET policy and practice’, Chief Executive Leigh Middleton underpinned the NYA request by pointing out that

Youth workers provide safe and trained adult relationships and offer tailored guidance that helps young people navigate barriers such as poverty, care experience, and limited social capital.

Whatever the merits of this claim, by mid-2026 what was undeniable was that for large numbers of young people their place in the labour market was, at best, highly uncertain. Though, as outlined above, some initiatives were being taken or proposed, including by the government, what in mid-2026 remained unchanged was that, to even begin to reverse this situation, it and policy-makers generally still had that ‘mountain to climb’.

Bernard Davies

References

[1] Bernard Davies, 2024, ‘Youth Work Policies in England 2019-2023: Can Open Youth Work Survive?’, palgrave macmillan, Chapter 2

[2] Andy Biggart, 2025, ‘Young Adults Transitions to Adulthood in the United Kingdom:  Protracted Yet Highly Diversified Pathways’, in Akio Inui et al, Youth Transition and Social Welfare, Springer, p 124

[3] Joe Lepper, 2024, ‘Youth unemployment at lowest level in a decade, report finds’, CYPN, 12 September

[4] Derren Hayes, 2024, ‘”People’s futures on the line” amid surge in youth unemployment, unions warn’, Guardian, 10 September

[5] Derren Hayes, 2026, ‘Youth unemployment rise leads to warning of “downward escalator’, CYPN, 17 February

[6] Derren Hayes, 2026, ‘Understanding latest Neet data – 5 key trends’, CYPN, 13 March

[7] Richard Partington, 2026, ‘UK has wealthy europe’s “throd-highest” rate of young adults not in work or study’, Guardian, 28 April

[8] Derren Hayes, 2025, ‘Labour grandee to investigate role of mental health and disability in rising youth unemployment’, CYPN, 10 November

[9] Sally Weale, 2024, ‘Suspended secondary pupils in England “twice as likely to be out of work by 24”’, Guardian, 20 August

[10] King’s Trust, 2024, ‘The Prince’s Trust NatWest Youth Index 2024’, 29 January 2024 https://www.kingstrust.org.uk/about-us/news-views/princestrustnatwestyouthindex2024; Amelia Hill, 2024, ‘Young people in UK having to refuse jobs due to high costs, report finds’, Guardian, 28 January; Amrit Virdi, 2024, ‘NEET young people worst affected by work and money worries’, CYPN, 30 January

[11] CYPN ‘Comment’, 2026, ‘Almost one million young people are NEET – here’s what we’re missing’, CYPN, 26 February

[12] Gaby Hinsliff, 2024, ‘Meet generation stay-at-home: “You don’t need to pay to go clubbing: you can sit at home and watch it on your phone”’, Guardian, 10 February

[13] Amelia Hill, 2024, ‘Young people in UK having to refuse jobs due to high costs, report finds’, Guardian, 28 January

[14] Hannah Devlin, 2024, ‘UK teens believe they will have harder lives than their parents, research finds’, Guardian, 4 March

[15] Joanne Parkes, 2026, ‘Study charts long-term negative impact of youth inactivity’, CYPN, 26 April

[16] Alexandra Topping, 2025, ‘“We can’t pit boys against girls”: headlines overshadow struggles of a generation of girls’, Guardian, 12 April

[17] Abraham Armstrong, 2025, ‘Disadvantaged pupils voice concerns over career prospects’, CYPN, 18 November

[18] Amelia Hill, 2026, ‘Most young adults in UK are anxious about jobs and the economy, research finds’, Guardian, 27 January

Guardian, 2024, ‘Warnings about benefits will not solve the problem of rising long-term sickness’, 5 March. See also BBC News, 2024. ‘More people in early 20s out of work from ill health than early 40s – study’, 27 February, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-68399392

[20] Richard Adams, 2024, ‘Pupils in England “facing worst exam results in decades”, after Covid closures’, Guardian, 24 April

[21] Amelia Hill, 2024, ‘Young people in UK having to refuse jobs due to high costs, report finds’, Guardian, 28 January

[22] Anna Bawden, 2025, ‘UK childhood mental health crisis to cost £1tn in lost pay, study finds’, Guardian, 5 February; Joe Lepper, 2025, ‘Campaigners warn over £1trn cost of children’s mental health crisis’, CYPN, 5 February

[23] Richard Partington, 2025, ‘Labour urged to rethink scrapping minimum wage youth rates amid “Neets” rise’, Guardian, 21 October

[24] Philip Inman, 2025, ‘Young people are biggest victims of UK’s fragile jobs market’, Guardian, 14 October

[25] Phillip Inman, 2026, ‘UK companies struggl ing to hire young people amid cost pressures, MPs told’, Guardian,11 March

[26] Richard Partington, 2025, ‘“Mountain to climb”: Labour is facing a crisis in youth unemployment’, Guardian, 21 August

[27] GOV.UK, 2025, ‘Almost one million young people to benefit from expanded support…’, 6 December, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/almost-a-million-young-people-to-benefit-from-expanded-support-new-training-and-work-experience-opportunities; Richard Partington, 2025, ‘Britain slipping down the global league table for youth employment, says report’, Guardian, 11 December

[28] Derren Hayes, 2026, ‘Spotlight on youth inactivity and government jobs action plan’, CYPN, 17 March

[29] Derren Hayes, 2025, ‘Labour grandee to investigate role of mental health and disability in rising youth unemployment’, CYPN, 10 November

[30] Derren Hayes, 2026, ‘Youth unemployment rise leads to warning of “downward escalator’, CYPN, 17 February

[31] Josh Halliday, 2026, ‘Give mayors more powers to tackle youth unemployment crisis, says Alan Milburn’, Guardian, 13 March

[32] GOV.UK, 2025, ‘Closed call for evidence: Young People and Work Report: Call for Evidence’, DWP, op cit

[33] Richard Partington, 2025, ‘Britain slipping down the global league table for youth employment, says report’, Guardian, 11 December

[34] NYA, 2025, ‘NYA urges Independent Report into Young People and Work to out youth work at the centre’, 20 November, https://nya.org.uk/nya-urges-independent-report-into-young-people-and-work-to-put-youth-work-at-the-centre/