Alan Milburn has warned that the proportion of young people not in education, employment or training (Neet) could rise to one in six within five years, as he cautioned that detachment from the labour market is becoming permanent for many.
Every young person has potential
Milburn said he believed every young person had something to offer. "When Pat [McFadden] first asked me to do this work, I came to it with this view: every young person has something to give—the scale and aptitude of potential. Every one of them should have an opportunity to learn or to earn," he said.
He noted that youth unemployment had been a persistent problem for a long time. "The Neet rate in our country has barely been below 10% in 25 years. It's one thing to be ignorant about a problem. It's quite another to be neglectful. And I'm sad to say that for far too long in our country, the Neet crisis has been swept under the carpet. Not any longer. This review exists because today Britain faces a genuine generational faultline," he added.
Problem worsening
Milburn stressed that the situation was deteriorating. "We do not just have a chronic problem; it is getting worse, not getting better. And we have neither a system nor a plan to deal with it," he said.
He highlighted a shift from temporary youth unemployment to deeper detachment. "A decade or more ago, the problem was temporary youth unemployment. And youth unemployment today is still, of course, far too high. But now it is something deeper and far more corrosive. It is youth detachment from the labour market," Milburn explained.
Alarming statistics
Nearly six in ten young people who are Neet today are economically inactive, meaning they are not looking for work. Six in ten have never had a job, compared to around four in ten twenty years ago. "Detachment is no longer temporary for too many young people; it is becoming permanent," he warned.
If the current trajectory continues, the report forecasts that today's one in eight young people who are Neet will climb to one in six within five years. "We are at risk of a lost generation," Milburn concluded.
