NEETs crisis: How did one million young people fall off the career ladder?

Early this year, the number of young people Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) tipped into seven figures. That’s one million individuals aged 16-24 with their entire lives ahead of them coiled up like a spring, but with their foot off the accelerator. Stationary. Stuck. 

It’s the first time this figure has exceeded one million since 2013. The release of the statistic was plastered across the news, sounding alarm bells among education, the economy, employers and the Treasury (one million people out of work is a costly problem). Of course, fingers were quickly pointed by those on high horses. The Daily Mail claimed that, “Internet-obsessed and job-shy Gen Z refuse to work for less than £40k,” while The Telegraph shared the insight that, “The young have been taught that hard work is optional.” A simple case of poor work ethic, supposedly. 

Researcher Shuab Gamote, at 27 a Gen Z-er himself, spent a year and a half travelling the country to find out what’s behind the crisis. He spoke to more than 1,000 young people to identify the forces shaping their opportunities, and figure out what’s preventing them reaching – or even forming – their ambitions. 

Gamote’s findings were fed into the already highly influential Milburn Review on young people and work, commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions, from Alan Milburn, the Blair-era cabinet minister turned independent social mobility adviser. Gamote sat down with Big Issue to bring us into the minds of the million young people struggling to make the transition into adulthood. 

One rejection too many

Before we begin, Gamote is careful to point out that, while he’s part of the same generation as the young people he’s been researching, this doesn’t mean they’ve all had the same experiences. In fact, he believes the label ‘Gen Z’ (defined as people born from 1997 to 2012) is “more useless than ever”. Terminology to cluster people into the same category “doesn’t explain different people’s views or opinions any more”, he explains. Advances in technology like AI and rapid global changes brought about by events such as Covid have meant “the point at which young people are interacting with those seismic events or pieces of technology really impacts their adolescence, impacts how they grow up and their mindset”.

After the Covid pandemic, which forced teens to complete their education in their bedrooms, or undertake “online work experience” (if they were lucky to get any), doors that briefly opened are now closing again, as the economy constricts and employers swap entry-level roles for cheap, AI-powered automation. Gamote argues this has created a “rejection economy”, where knock-back after knock-back has compounded to give young people a sense that they have “no agency over their own lives”. Given these circumstances, he says, “the idea they just need to put in more effort and try harder is really sad”.

At the crux of Gamote’s findings is a key problem: the ability to absorb rejection is not evenly distributed. Young people who have had stable family environments, mentors to encourage or open doors for them, or pre-pandemic – even basic – people-facing work experience, are better able to ride the roller coaster of life. Those who haven’t, can get stuck. 

Read more:

• How Britain failed one million NEET young people: ‘We’re wasting a generation’s talent’
• There has been a 60% rise in Big Issue vendors aged 18 to 24 since 2022: ‘I wanted to be a lawyer’
• Go without Netflix and avocado toast? Young people say they can’t afford essentials let alone luxuries

Individuals behind the figures

The figure of one million NEETs is made up of around 613,000 “economically inactive” people – those who have stopped looking for work – and around 400,000 actively trying to land a job. This distinction matters: those who have given up are likely struggling to cope with rejection, and need support building their resilience, while those who are actively looking by sending out 20 job applications a day, may not be ‘job ready’.

“We need to understand young people’s distances from work. Without understanding that we can’t give them the support they need,” Gamote says. In other words, someone who previously volunteered in their local library but spent 18 months at home with severe mental health difficulties, needs something different from a graduate with high grades but no real-world work experience.  

Many of the young people Gamote met during his research weren’t aware of the term NEET, let alone using it to refer to themselves. When he told them that a million other young people were in a similar position, most were shocked at the scale, “but it was also a sense of relief [for them] that they weren’t in it alone”, he says. 

Behind the acronym are young carers, care leavers, neurodivergent teenagers, and young people navigating serious mental health problems — all needing very different kinds of support. While Gamote acknowledges the phrase NEET is meaningless to many, he does credit this simple term for building the political salience that’s grabbed the attention of politicians who seem to grasp the need for urgent action. 

Looking for solutions

As part of his research, Gamote visited the Netherlands, a country with one of the world’s lowest NEET rates, at just 4.9% of 18- to 24-year-olds (compared to 13.5% in the UK today). He found that at 12 years old, Dutch children are streamed into academic, semi-vocational and vocational routes.

“And importantly, all three of those routes have genuine parity of esteem and lead to great outcomes for those young people,” Gamote says. This means that young people leave school with an understanding of their skills and their assets – what they can do, what they want to do, and how to build a career around that.

The result, Gamote says, is strikingly low youth unemployment and some of the happiest children in the world. This contrasts with the UK school environment where large numbers of pupils, including high achievers, “describe school as miserable”, according to Gamote.

“It is quite wide-ranging reform that needs to be made,” he says, but he believes new prime minister Andy Burnham – who introduced the Manchester Baccalaureate to offer a technical alternative to the traditional university route – has “got an appetite for it”.

Gamote’s own upbringing was far from privileged in the financial sense – the son of a taxi driver and a housewife – but he credits other privileges for setting him up for success. Growing up in a household with plenty of stability and encouragement helped him to absorb rejection that could otherwise have been fatal.

He didn’t do particularly well at school, but found his footing later, and credits a run of interventions: a mentor through the One Million Mentors scheme, a local library he became involved with and later helped turn into a community centre, and a part-time job at McDonald’s from a young age, as building his resilience.

His advice to young people, or parents of young people who want to raise resilient adults, is to first dismantle any preconceived notions you might have. They’re growing up in an entirely different world to the one that existed just a couple of decades ago. And on a more practical level: push them to get a job at 16 – the experiences they’ll gain will far outweigh the pocket money.

“They’re going to face so much rejection in their lives,” he adds. “Try to support them to seek what they’re good at.”

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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