Government Should Not Forget The NEETs

It was with some incredulity that I wrote several months ago about a poll that claimed one in ten young people never intend to start work.

One senior Gloucestershire County Council official was flabbergasted at the claim. I felt the same.

The poll, taken before the General Election of 5000 people by Opinium for City & Guilds (the skills development organisation), indicated that as many as 227 000 young adults across the UK do not intend to get a job.

That’s staggering and depressing.

But those figures took on a stark reality for me last week when the Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, unveiled a White Paper titled Get Britain Working.

Haven’t we heard of this somewhere before?

Britain isn’t working, if you remember, was a key Margaret Thatcher slogan in the 1979 General Election campaign.

The reality now is that there are now almost 1 million under 25s who are not in work or studying, the highest figure for a decade.

And this number of our young people who are not in employment, education or training, the so called NEETS, climbed to 946 000 in the three months to September according to the Office for National Statistics.

In Gloucestershire for October, I am told there were 724 NEETS, 250 more than the September figures.

Worklessness among 16-24 year olds is now at its highest level since 2014 following a rise of almost one quarter of young NEETS since the Covid pandemic.

How can government create real growth with such a workless, economically inactive group of young people-not withstanding skilled people over 50 who have not returned to full time employment after Covid?

This is a huge challenge for government and business. 

In believe that government must now seek to develop teams of schools careers teachers linking them with local business to ensure worklessness is not on young people’s agenda but hope and aspiration are.

I regularly go into schools and see what limited time teachers have to talk about future careers for their students.

Look what happens in Germany. Firms go into primary schools to encourage an interest in engineering, for instance.

The government is going through something of a re-set this week. They should not forget the NEETS.