More than a million young people in Britain, aged 16 to 24, are now not in employment, education or training — the proportion hitting a new high of 13.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2026. The figure has risen sharply from 12 per cent at the end of 2023, leaving the UK among the worst performers in Europe, with only Romania recording a higher rate in recent comparisons.
Andy Burnham knows there is a problem. But to fix it, he needs to understand why so many young people appear to be frittering away their futures. A shortage of jobs would require different remedies from unfitness for work, and the crisis turns out to need all three potential solutions.
“UK's NEET rate hits record 13.5% as more than one million young people are out of work or education.”
A growing proportion of economically inactive NEETs report health problems — including mental ill health — as a reason they cannot work. An overlapping group have been fostered, are in special needs schools, or have been raised by inexperienced young parents. Money spent avoiding what these children suffered, Burnham has been told, would be both kinder and cheaper than remedial efforts, even when successful.
Another tragic cohort, overlapping with those suffering anxiety, messed up their GCSEs. Nationally, a third of children leave school without level 4 or above in Maths and English. Poor performance is class-biased: the lower the social status, the worse the results. One brilliant kid with zero GCSEs is desperate to work, but Whitehall's credentialism leaves him stuffed before he starts — many vocational routes require those qualifications. Part of the problem is low income, but it is also cultural: middle-class families are more familiar with the phrases, habits and expectations aligned with exam success.
The NEET rate is generally higher across much of northern England and the Midlands than in London. In the capital, only 12 per cent of young people are NEETs, while the North-East has the highest rate, between 15 and 21 per cent, followed by Yorkshire and Humberside, the East Midlands, the North-West and the West Midlands. Young people growing up in London have cultural advantages: abundant role models of success, and often raised by aspirational parents — either well-educated and working in high-skilled finance jobs, or immigrants keen for their children's success. London's GCSE results reflect this: it is the top-performing region.
The antithesis of these cultural advantages is the bleakness facing children growing up in broken, demoralised and deprived coastal and former industrial towns. Take Blackpool: despite five years of renewal driven by an excellent mayor, it still has one of the highest rates of male suicides in the country. The question for Burnham is whether he can replicate London's success elsewhere — and whether that will be enough to reverse a crisis that is now the worst in Europe.