More than a million young people in the UK are now not in work, education or training – a figure that Alan Milburn warns could climb to 1.25 million unless radical change is delivered. The former health secretary and one-time chair of the Social Mobility Commission has published the first part of a forensic diagnosis of what he calls a “moral crisis”, laying out a case that goes far beyond the immediate plight of so-called Neets to indict an entire system of institutional neglect stretching back decades.
The scale of the crisis
According to the latest official data, 13.5% of 16‑ to 24‑year‑olds in the UK were Neet in January‑March 2026 – an increase of 1.0 percentage point on the year, representing 1,012,000 young people. That is 89,000 more than a year earlier and 55,000 more than the previous quarter. Young men are disproportionately affected: 14.4% of young men are Neet, up 1.2 points on the year. The youth unemployment rate for 16‑ to 24‑year‑olds has reached 16.2%, with 729,000 unemployed – 110,000 more than the previous year. Although the Neet rate peaked at 16.9% in 2011 after the 2008 recession, it has been rising again since 2021 and now sits at its highest point in over a decade. More than half of Neets (57%) are economically inactive, neither working nor looking for work.
Milburn’s report records the fate of young people far beyond the poorest. Britain’s gross inequality, he argues, is starkly revealed in the lives of children: those from the poorest families and in geographically deprived, job‑free areas are most likely to end up Neet, and those lacking early‑years support are three times more likely to become Neet. But this is not only a story of the most disadvantaged. The social portrait he paints echoes concerns raised by 19th‑century surveys by Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree, and more recently by the Child Poverty Action Group, the Resolution Foundation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Social mobility has plummeted since the 1970s, and for the first time younger generations are worse off than their parents were at the same age – a “broken social contract”, Milburn says.
Systemic failures laid bare
What distinguishes Milburn’s report is not the familiar data but the sweep of his indictment. He describes a “catastrophic failure” that requires nothing less than a “whole system reset”. Children and young people, he argues, have had a catastrophically low priority in resources and political concern, especially since 2010. Youth services and careers advice have been lost; government departments operate in dislocated silos with chaotic non‑communication; small schemes come and go without lasting impact. “Tinkering” will no longer do.
The school curriculum comes in for particularly sharp criticism. Milburn is horrified by an exam‑obsessed system where schools are assessed only on qualification results, not on the outcomes and destinations of pupils when they leave. When he asked employers, only 3% complained about literacy and maths qualifications. “Employers want agility and adaptability,” he says. “The school system is not designed for work.” He denounces forced multiple GCSE retakes, which he says extinguish any enthusiasm for learning. Only 64% of young people report being happy at school; the rest find it “traumatic” or “boring”, filled with exam dread and failure.
Further education colleges face a cap on student numbers while universities do not, despite desperate employer demand for skills. Funding per student aged 16‑18 in FE colleges fell by 14% in real terms between 2010‑11 and 2019‑20, and despite a recent cash‑terms boost, rising student numbers and inflation have merely frozen funding per student. Mental health services are also faulted: treatment is counted, but outcomes such as helping people back into work are not. Access to NHS Child and Young People’s Mental Health Services remains challenging, often requiring GP referrals, though efforts to expand mental health support teams in schools are ongoing.
Work coaches, Milburn notes with indignation, are underfunded and overburdened with caseloads of more than 100. In a recent visit to a Tower Hamlets jobcentre, he listened to young people’s weekly meetings with their coaches and heard “all their eagerness to work crushed by the lack of jobs”. The voices of young people leap off his report: 84% of those surveyed wanted to work or do an apprenticeship; a further 19% wanted to enter education or training. Some 30% have five good GCSEs or equivalent, and 15% have degrees. Yet they face a job market where their CVs are read by artificial intelligence, where online interviews are conducted by algorithms on platforms such as Hirevue, and where they never receive a response. “A young man with a computing science degree” is among those whose misery is captured in the report.
Milburn dismisses the idea that recent increases in employers’ national insurance, the minimum wage or extra working rights are to blame. “Bullshit,” he says bluntly. “This didn’t start two years ago. It’s not the cause of the crisis.” He points instead to the 1.6 million first‑rung jobs that have vanished in the past 20 years, and to a 35% fall in apprenticeship starts over the past decade (though there has been a recent uptick: apprenticeship starts in England rose 4.1% in 2024/25 to 353,500, with higher apprenticeships up 15.1% to 140,730). “This is structural, not about writing better CVs.” The loss of retail and hospitality jobs, coupled with the disappearance of Saturday jobs and the low priority given to work experience in schools, has created a catch‑22: 60% of Neets have never held a job, and employers reject them for exactly that reason, whatever their qualifications.
Life on benefits is not easy street, Milburn insists. The working‑age benefits bill is not “out of control”, as Treasury minister Torsten Bell pointed out this week on BBC Radio 4: it has remained a flat proportion of GDP for decades (it is the triple‑locked pensions bill that rises). Yes, there is a serious problem of so many young people stuck on sickness benefits, but Milburn argues they need support into work, not an arbitrary cut to welfare. “Every £1 spent on support is matched by £25 spent on benefits. Reverse that!”
The barriers facing young people from troubled families or with poor mental health could have been overcome years ago with help at school age, he says. The “perfect storm” has hit those who lost two years of social and educational life during the Covid pandemic, were left unprotected from social media, and now face an economic downturn. Young workers accounted for nearly half (46%) of the total fall in employment during the pandemic, and there are fears of long‑term “scarring effects”. Early‑years education is now getting top priority again, but Milburn says much more expert teaching and family support is still needed.
A landmark intervention with potential to shift priorities
Milburn’s report is only the diagnosis; the remedies will come in a second part due just before the Labour conference. He talks of early prevention saving both life chances and money, but can he persuade the Treasury to provide the bridging loan needed to fund early support – cash that will only be recouped years later? “We shall see,” he says, but notes the wind is in his sails. The report has the potential to become the Beveridge report of our time, a landmark intervention that finally shifts national priorities and goals towards young people.
For Labour, struggling for renewed purpose, the party can find it all here. Milburn documents a country where, for the first time, younger generations are worse off than their parents. He describes a “broken social contract”. Tony Blair’s recent essay, he notes with irritation, completely misses all of this. The government should ignore Blair’s intervention and read every word of Milburn’s: this is what Labour is for.