‘A record of failure’: what’s in the first part of Alan Milburn’s Neet report?

Alan Milburn, the Blair-era cabinet minister turned social mobility adviser, has delivered the first part of his government-commissioned report on why increasing numbers of people aged 16 to 24 are not in education, employment or training (Neet).

Its 217 pages cover the extent and causes of the issue – with possible solutions coming in his next report – and set out a hugely detailed and damning picture of what Milburn calls a “record of failure”, one that is letting down young people. These are some of its main points.

About 1 million young people across the UK are not in jobs, training or education – about one in eight – and things are getting worse, both absolutely and relatively. As Milburn notes, a decade ago the UK’s Neet rate was near the EU average. In 2025, only Romania’s rate was worse.

It is also increasingly entrenched. The report says that six in 10 young people who are Neet have never had a single job, against four in 10 in 2005. Milburn writes: “We are at risk of a lost generation. That is a moral crisis. It has economic consequences.” This cumulative cost, the report says, is estimated at £125bn.

A constant thread of the report is that these issues are structural, not down to today’s young people being workshy or coddled. And much of this is due to disparities in wealth, background, geography or ethnicity.

One statistic cited shows that in Barnet, north London, 1% of 16- and 17-year-olds are Neet. In Dudley, in the West Midlands, this is 21.5%. Of the 10 English local authorities with the highest proportion of young people not in work or education, eight are in the north or Midlands.

This is in turn the result of a range of risk factors, including education – those with fewer GCSEs, or additional needs, or who are persistently absent from school, are strongly connected to future Neet status. Similarly, being a care leaver or a young carer increases the risk.

Geography plays its own part. People with identical backgrounds will face more barriers to work or education in some places. This can also cover areas such as transport – London, which has both plentiful public transport and free or discounted youth travel, has a notably low level of Neets, the report notes, adding that this is just one factor.

Health, Milburn says, “has become central to who becomes Neet and who stays Neet”, calling this “a story that should disturb anyone who cares about the future of young people in this country”.

Young people in this state, the report says, are now more likely to be economically inactive (53%) than unemployed (47%), with increasing amounts of health-based inactivity due to anxiety, depression or neurodevelopmental conditions. This has long-term consequences, with about seven in 10 young people who claim a health and disability benefit still doing so a decade later.

Among factors making this worse, the report says, is an NHS based more around categorising young people as unable to work rather than helping them back into it, calling GPs’ “fit note” system “the poster child for this structural failure”.

The study estimates that for every £25 the Department for Work and Pensions spends on benefits for young people, it devotes just £1 to helping them back into work, calling this symptomatic of a system which does little to change things.

What support into work or training does exist tends to be focused on those with the fewest barriers, it says, with those facing more difficulties often being left alone. Of those who first claim a health or disability benefit aged 16 to 24, almost half are still out of work or education a decade later.

This is not a cause of Neet status, the report argues, but it “often amplifies it”. Thus, while the UK and the Netherlands have similar rates of anxiety conditions among young people, the Dutch Neet rate is notably lower.

As part of the study, Milburn talked directly to young people who recounted gloomy tales of sending off dozens of CVs that were sifted and rejected by AI, or who were tested via AI simulations, being repeatedly turned down for work without ever talking to a human.

Entry-level jobs, the report says, are becoming harder to get, in part because of this remote recruitment, but also because the roles traditionally filled by younger people – retail, customer service, warehousing – are now either scarcer or more specialised.

Milburn finds also that employers are less willing to take on younger staff, in part due to relatively higher minimum wages, but also because some companies fear what the report calls the “pastoral burden” of young people’s needs.

These occur throughout the report, and include subjects as basic as the housing market. As many young people assume they will never be able to afford their own home, there is a lack of the stability required to plan work or training.

The report also notes that while the UK’s schools often perform well by international metrics in terms of academic attainment, most young people felt they were given no real support about what came next.

More widely, it highlights a fragmented and hugely varied system for helping young people, with minimal monitoring or accountability.

Heading off a common refrain in this debate, Milburn makes it very plain that he rejects the “sometimes cruel” myths about a generation with no interest in work, or that hides behind the excuse of poor mental health, saying the overwhelming majority of Neets want to find work, education or training.

They are, however, a product of a changed world: “Young people are different from those who came before them. Not worse. Not lazier. Not less intelligent. But different in ways that have material consequences.”