Stuck at the Start: Youth Unemployment in the UK

Nearly one million young people in the UK are not in education, employment or training (NEET), with this being the highest figure of the decade. For many of these people (aged 16-24) the job market feels like fighting a losing battle; they are told they need experience to work, but need work to gain experience, a vicious cycle leaving them demoralised and stuck.

As a young person living in the UK myself, I can confidently agree that the job market here is a cruel thing. It almost feels like it is designed to work against you. In 2026 alone, I applied for 18 low-skill jobs (of which part-time and temporary/seasonal roles were virtually impossible to find), I received only 3 responses, 2 rejections, and 1 interview, where the link to book an interview was not found. That is a 16.7% response rate, and a 0% success rate, yet I am not an outlier, I am the norm.

Yet this reality is the polar opposite of the UK's global image as a land of fairness, social mobility, a nation built on the promise that hard work is paramount to success, and that each generation will carry on to be even better than the last.

Entry level roles, the jobs that were intended as stepping stones for young people to begin to bridge the gap between education and the 'real world' are now non-existent. Economic pressures mean that many adults are competing for these junior roles, just to get by, but they have the luxury of applying with years of experience which are impossible for any 17-year-old to match. And more recently, some roles have been automated or absorbed by AI tools that can work faster, more efficiently and for much less money than any human being could. The result of all this? A job market where the doors are closed, but we are told to keep knocking. A job market where 62% of NEETs have never worked at all. A job market where an entire generation is written off lazy for not finding work that simply does not exist.

Paradoxically to these shocking statistics, the NEET of today are more qualified than they ever have been. In 2024-25, 40% of NEET had qualifications at A-level or above, a 36% increase from 2014-15. We are always told that the formula is simple: good grades + university = stable career, so we follow it. We work late, do extracurriculars, some go as far as to sacrifice their mental health for their grades. But now we are told that our A levels are not enough and that our degrees do not guarantee anything. The qualifications we believed would be the key to stability have become the baseline, the expectation, and instead the real filters are the things we cannot control: who our parents know, whether we can secure an unrealistic amount of work experience at all the major firms that the country has to offer, whether we live in countryside or the city.

So how did we get here? When did a country that prides itself on equality end up with a job market where your postcode, or ability to afford internships and work experience matters more than your grades or grit? How did we arrive somewhere where sending hundreds of applications often yields silence?

The answer is not simple. It is a combination of many factors which I could discuss for pages and pages, but it all starts with recognising that the system is not broken, it is working exactly as it was designed to: to support those who have, and leave those who don't behind. If we want to see change, we must redesign it. This is why I am a strong believer in the work that Learndustry does, who have recognised that the system needs updating to cater for those who will continue it. With countless opportunities to get stuck into various sections of the working world, and support in getting the grades to get there, Learndustry is the future.