Alan Milburn is Right: We cannot afford to keep Failing Young People by Design

This article was written by Laura-Jane Rawlings MBE DL, CEO & Founder of Youth Employment UK. It explores the growing youth unemployment crisis in the UK, highlighting Alan Milburn’s review and calling for joined-up, long-term reforms to improve young people’s access to employment, education and opportunity.

Alan Milburn’s interim review on young people and work should be a turning point in how we talk about youth unemployment, opportunity and economic participation in this country.

Not because the findings will surprise those of us working in youth employment every day, but because the scale of the challenge is now impossible to ignore.

Now over one million young people are not in education, employment or training, and the review warns that figure could rise to 1.25 million within five years without significant reform. This is not a short-term labour market issue. It is a structural warning sign.

For too long, conversations about young people outside work have drifted towards narratives about motivation or work ethic. The Milburn Review cuts through that. It recognises something young people themselves have been telling us for years: this is not principally a failure of aspiration. It is a failure of systems.

At Youth Employment UK, we hear this consistently through the Youth Voice Census, our Youth Ambassadors and our work with employers, providers and local areas. Young people still want stability, purpose, progression and financial independence. What has changed is the ease with which they can access those things.

The pathways into work have become harder to navigate and less visible.

Entry-level opportunities have reduced. Apprenticeship starts among young people have declined. Work experience remains inconsistent. Many employers want to recruit young people but struggle to navigate fragmented skills and employment systems. At the same time, young people are trying to transition into adulthood against a backdrop of rising mental ill-health, housing pressures and disrupted education experiences.

None of those issues exist in isolation. That is why no single programme will solve this.

One of the most important points in the review is not simply the number of young people who are NEET, but the imbalance in how we respond. The report highlights that for every £1 spent supporting young people into employment, around £25 is spent on benefits.

We are often better at funding crisis than prevention.

Too often support only arrives once a young person has already become disconnected from education, employment or services altogether. By then, barriers have compounded and confidence may already have fallen sharply.

What is needed is a genuinely joined-up participation system around young people.

That means earlier intervention before disengagement becomes entrenched. It means stronger transitions between education and work. It means mental health support, careers education, SEND provision and employment support working together rather than operating in silos. It also means making it easier for employers, particularly SMEs, to create opportunities for young people.

At Youth Employment UK, much of our work focuses on helping connect those gaps.

We support young people directly through free careers resources, skills tools, opportunities and employer connections designed to help them better understand and navigate the labour market. Alongside this, we work with employers through the Good Youth Employment Standards to improve recruitment practices, create more accessible entry routes and build workplaces where young people can develop and progress.

We also work with combined authorities, colleges and local partnerships to help design more joined-up local approaches rooted in youth voice, employer engagement and evidence of what works.

Because while national policy matters, young people experience opportunity locally.

Transport, local labour markets, employer networks, FE provision and access to support all vary significantly depending on where a young person lives. That is why local partnerships matter so much, and why short-term, fragmented funding continues to undermine long-term progress.

The challenge now is not whether good practice exists. It does.

Across the country, providers, employers, charities and local partnerships are already developing approaches that improve transitions, rebuild confidence and reconnect young people with opportunity. But too much of this work still relies on unstable funding and isolated programmes rather than long-term system design.

The UK cannot continue talking about productivity, labour shortages and economic growth while allowing increasing numbers of young people to become disconnected from opportunity. These issues are directly connected.

Research supported by Youth Futures Foundation has estimated that matching the youth participation rates of the best-performing countries could add tens of billions to the UK economy. The cost of failing young people is already enormous – economically, socially and personally.

The next phase of the Milburn Review therefore matters enormously. Not simply because of the recommendations themselves, but because of whether government, employers, education and local leaders are prepared to build a system designed around participation rather than crisis management.

Young people are not asking for lowered expectations. They are asking for fairer access to opportunity.

That is a reasonable ask. Increasingly, it is also an economic necessity.

By Laura-Jane Rawlings MBE DL, CEO & Founder of Youth Employment UK