Nearly a million young people aged 16-24 in the UK are currently not in education, employment or training (NEET) – the highest level in over a decade.
While the government’s new Youth Guarantee marks a welcome step in the right direction, a more ambitious policy agenda that helps all young people to re-engage with education or enter sustainable employment is needed.
This is the view of the Resolution Foundation, which has published a list of reccomendations to help reverse this trend, including:
- Strengthen enforcement of participation duties for 16-17-year-olds, ensuring local authorities track and re-engage young people who drop out of education or training.
- Create a national ‘front door’ for 16-17-year-olds, to help young people access education, training or employment support quickly and consistently.
- Expand the Youth Guarantee to cover all 18-24-year-olds, not just 18-21-year-olds, and ensure that those who are not claiming out-of-work benefits also qualify for support.
- Rethink the proposed changes to health benefits for young people aged under 22 and instead undertake more ambitious changes to the benefits system that will actually reduce NEET numbers. This should include more frequent Work Capability Assessments for young people on UC-Health, and beefed up work search requirements for young jobseekers.
- Do not abolish youth minimum wage rates. More generally, proceed carefully with measures that add to the costs of employing younger workers in the current labour-market environment.
A dire situation
The number of young people aged 16-24 who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) has risen by 195,000 over the past two years to reach 940,000, according to a new NEETs estimate using administrative data, in line with estimates from the Labour Force Survey.
Three-in-five NEETs are economically inactive – that is, not actively looking for work – rather than unemployed. And more than a quarter (28%) cite disability or poor health as their reason for being out of work or study.
Despite concern about graduate employment prospects, it is lower-qualified young people who continue to have the highest NEET rates. NEET rates for graduates aged 22-24 have remained relatively low and stable at around 10 per cent throughout the past two decades. In contrast, NEET rates for 22-24-year-olds who hold a highest qualification that is at GCSE level or below have a NEET rate that is three-times as high (30%).
Out-of-work benefit claims among young people are on the rise: between 2019 and 2024, the number of 16-24-year-olds in the UK who are receiving Universal Credit (or equivalent) while out of work has risen from 430,000 to 530,000 – a rise of 24%.
But nearly half (44%) of NEETs do not engage with the benefits system. This raises the tricky question of how to design effective policy to engage with NEETs who have no reason to regularly engage with the state.
Leave a Reply