Getting started in the world of work was not easy for Rose Green. Having experienced half a dozen children’s homes from the age of 13, while growing up in care in north London, finding a career was the last thing on her mind.
“Having that corporate parenting, it can be difficult,” she says. “Sometimes things like completing school, or uni, you’re faced with so much trauma that you haven’t really got the time to finish all of that.”
“You’re kind of parenting yourself, raising yourself. But you’re a child. You’re just cracking on doing what you think you’re supposed to do. Even today, I’m still figuring it out.”
Despite those challenges, the 26-year-old from Camden has found work as an employment and training officer at the local council. After completing a care leavers’ internship, she now helps others to overcome the same hurdles.
Green’s work will be critical not just for the next generation but for the British economy at large, and for Keir Starmer’s government, as Labour promises to fix what experts have called a crisis in youth employment.
Official figures on Thursday show that the number of young people not in education, employment or training (Neet) has leapt by more than a quarter in the past five years to reach almost 1m.
In the three months to June, there were 948,000 young people aged 16 to 24 who were Neet, according to the Office for National Statistics. The number has increased from 750,000 at the end of 2019, and by about 40,000 since Labour came to power a year ago. Care leavers are significantly more likely to be among them.
The figures mean one in eight young people across the country are out of employment, education or training at a time when Britain’s jobs market is cooling, as employers grapple with higher taxes and a weak economic outlook.
Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, acknowledges that Labour has a “mountain to climb” to bring the numbers down. “We’re making a start and I am absolutely determined we are going to deliver,” she says.
Speaking at the Euston Skills Centre after meeting Green, other Camden council employment advisers, and young people in care, she said the government will extend a £45m scheme of “trailblazer” projects in eight English mayoral authorities to support young adults to find work.
“We cannot have a generation of young people denied the opportunities they need,” Kendall said. “It’s not good for them and it’s terrible for the country as well … it doesn’t have to be that way.”
The scheme was launched this spring, with one year of funding. Kendall says the extension until spring 2027 will provide additional resources for the programme, which provides tailored job support. The schemes in London and Liverpool are focused on supporting care leavers.
Other locations with trailblazers include the West Midlands, the Tees Valley, the East Midlands, the West of England combined authority and the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough combined authority.
However, while ministers have promised a “youth guarantee”, offering every young person access to education or training to help them find work, Labour has faced rising criticism that its other policies have had a chilling impact on the jobs market.
Official figures show that unemployment has risen since Rachel Reeves’s £25bn rise in employer national insurance contributions (NICs) and increase in the “national living wage”. Job vacancies in hospitality, retail and summer work – typically filled by younger adults – have also fallen sharply.
Kendall has faced intense criticism. On the right of politics, the work and pensions secretary is under fire for the number of universal credit claimants hitting 8 million. From within her own party, and among charities and campaigners, the government has been warned that “huge swathes” of severely disabled people will be hit by planned cuts to benefits, despite the high-profile U-turn on other changes to disability support.
With a tough autumn budget looming, Reeves is under pressure to cover a multibillion-pound shortfall in the government finances, in part exposed by Labour’s retreat on planned disability benefit cuts.
Despite offering a fresh £45m for eight youth trailblazer schemes, are the government’s other changes not pushing in the opposite direction? And might the work and pensions secretary be pressed to make further savings?
Kendall is defiant. “I am under no illusions about the scale of the task. And you can’t just flick a switch and put right a decade of stagnant growth and poor support.
“But we are putting this in place. It is making a difference to real people. And I will shout that from the rooftops.”
