DWP Young people and work: interim report

Numbers on that scale should command national attention in their own right. Too often they haven’t. The NEET rate has barely crept below 10% in 25 years. What should have been treated as an urgent national crisis has been absorbed into the background noise of public life.

That tolerance is no longer acceptable.

This Review exists because today Britain faces a generational fault line. Britain not only has a chronic problem. It is one that is getting worse not better. It is no longer simply a question of temporary youth unemployment. Today the deeper problem is youth detachment from the labour market. Nearly 60% of young people who are NEET now are economically inactive. They are not just out of work. They are not looking for work.

Shockingly, 6 in 10 young people who are NEET today have never had a job, up from 4 in 10 in 2005. At the very point when they should be starting adult life, gaining confidence, building skills, learning the habits of work and taking their first steps towards independence, too many are becoming detached from education and employment altogether. We are at risk of a lost generation.