Why are so many young adults not in education, employment or training? The latest statistics show that almost one million 16 to 24-year-olds are unemployed, or ‘Neet’, to use the inappropriately cheery-sounding acronym. Fractionally down on the previous quarter, this is still close to a ten-year high. The number of Neets has been consistently above 900,000 since early 2024, peaking at 987,000 – around one-in-eight young people – earlier this year.

Falling out of education and employment in your early twenties can have a devastating impact. More than half a million of those who are not currently working or studying have never had a job. Neets face not just financial hardship but loneliness, boredom and ill health. And yet this is not a new problem. The Neet acronym was adopted by Tony Blair, who made ending social exclusion one of his government’s top priorities. Yet despite this, the number of Neets rose steadily throughout New Labour’s time in office, before falling sharply until 2022. Over the past three years, youth unemployment has been on the rise again.  

Explanations abound. There’s Covid, of course. Children who dropped out of education during lockdown were always likely to struggle to find work or a place at college. But the problem goes deeper. Long gone are the days when people, like my father, could leave school on a Friday and start working as a labourer the following Monday.........

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