UK youth risk jobs ‘scrap heap’ without urgent action, minister says

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Young people who came of age during the Covid-19 pandemic risk being left “on the scrap heap” without urgent action to re-engage those who have drifted away from work and education, according to the UK’s employment minister.

Alison McGovern told the Financial Times that the effects of disrupted education and lost opportunities for young people “to get their first boss” were now visible to work coaches in jobcentres.

This had compounded the effects of the previous decade, which “was not a good period for young people”, she said, warning of lasting effects on people’s prospects “if you end up on the scrap heap when you’re young”.

“I’m really worried about what we’re seeing at the moment,” McGovern said, when asked about official data pointing to a sharp rise last year in the number of young people falling out of work and education. “Young people from working-class backgrounds who have no qualifications are really at risk of not moving on with their career.”

McGovern was speaking ahead of the release of new research showing how socio-economic disadvantage, low qualifications, special education needs or disabilities (SEND) and ethnicity can exacerbate the chances of not being in education, employment or training (NEET). 

The report, published on Tuesday by the charity Impetus, found that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds were 66 per cent more likely to be NEET than average.

Their chances improved with each step they took up the qualifications ladder, but even those with higher qualifications did not fare as well in the jobs market as better-off peers. 

The areas with the highest rate of NEETs were concentrated in the north of England and Midlands, but all regions had black spots — including prosperous places with pockets of deprivation, such as Brighton & Hove.

Impetus said the findings overturned assumptions “that simply living in urban areas, or indeed areas in the South of England, necessarily protects” young people from becoming NEET. 

The worst outcomes, however, were for young people facing what Impetus called “triple jeopardy” — coming from a disadvantaged background, while also having SEND and lacking GCSE-level qualifications. This group is three times more likely to be neither earning nor learning than average. 

Susannah Hardyman, Impetus chief executive, said the data — based on detailed government records covering a period from 2011 to 2019 — would help government tailor and target support where it was most needed.

“What helps in London might not help in rural Cumbria,” she said, adding that the findings on the value of qualifications called into question the decision to end the post-pandemic tutoring programme for children most affected by the disruption to their education.

Recent official data suggests the barriers young people face have become even bigger since the pandemic, with the number of 16- to 24-year-olds classed as NEET rising sharply over the past year to more than 900,000.

These figures, based on the Office for National Statistics’ troubled labour market survey, are uncertain. But separate evidence also points to more young people falling out of the jobs market due to mental health problems.

The government set out plans last autumn for a “youth guarantee” intended to offer all young people access to a job, training or apprenticeship — with initial funding of £45mn for eight “trailblazer” areas to test ways of supporting young people at risk of becoming NEET.

McGovern said these trailblazers would test ways for community organisations to reach young people who missed out on the support offered to benefits claimants through jobcentres at present.

“There are young people not claiming benefits who are just as lost,” she said, adding that the trailblazers were one element of wider reforms to overhaul the Jobcentre network and create better jobs in deprived areas.

But Hardyman said it would take time for the trailblazers to become established. There was a need to go “further and faster”, she said, especially given ministers’ plans to cut disability benefit and prevent young people claiming the health element of universal credit until the age of 22.

Separate research published on Tuesday by the Resolution Foundation think-tank found that the government’s package of benefits cuts and increased job support for the sick and disabled could bring at most 105,000 people into work by the end of the decade — while pushing hundreds of thousands into poverty.

McGovern declined to comment on the Foundation’s findings.

A government spokesperson said the think-tank had given “only a partial picture” as it did not take into account plans that ministers had previously set out to boost job and health support, or reflect “the true scale of . . . reforms to get people out of poverty”.