When Rachel Rafter’s 23-year-old son Matt finished college and started applying for jobs, he began to lose confidence. “Matt became despondent, and it really affected his motivation,” says Rachel. “He was going on websites like Indeed and not getting a job, even when Tesco were doing a recruitment drive. Sometimes he wasn’t even getting an acknowledgement back at all. It’s easy these days for young people to lose confidence because they see that they’re one of so many applying for the same job, and there’s all the doom-and-gloom on social media. We were worried about him.”
Rachel, who lives in Bournemouth, is a singer and vocal coach, and her husband is a university lecturer. They tried to help Matt as best they could. “It had been years since I’d had to apply for jobs like that, and things have changed,” she says. How did Matt cope during the year he was unemployed? “He’s into his fitness,” says Rachel, “so he’d make himself go to the gym – but then other times he’d be in his room, and we definitely noticed him become a bit more withdrawn.”
Matt was, for a year, a Neet – Not in Employment, Education or Training. The latest ONS figures suggest that 13 per cent of all young people in the UK are in this category, and the number is rising. Former health secretary Alan Milburn’s independent report on Neets, published in May 2026, has exposed that the rate of youth unemployment has reached a crisis point.
Nearly 900,000 18-24 year olds are Neets, and there will be 1.25 million by 2030. More than 300,000 of these do not claim benefits and are referred to in the report as “hidden Neets”, most of whom are supported financially by relatively well-off families. Four in five live with their parents, and a third of those who live alone receive money for living expenses from their family. Half of hidden Neets come from families that, at age 14, had at least one parent in a managerial or professional occupation.
“A lot of people don’t have any sense of direction at all,” Matt says. “Similar to me, they don’t know what they want to do. At school they don’t really teach you how to get a job, so it’s quite scary for young people. Especially as they might not even have parents to help them.”
Rachel and her son Matt, who found direction, confidence and practical advice on an immensely tough job market, from Spear’s employment programmeWhat changed Matt’s situation was enrolling in a free, month-long youth employment course with the charity Spear. “They demystified the job market. They gave him confidence, practical advice, help with the CV, and helped him overcome shyness by presenting ideas with other people. He went from hearing nothing to getting two job offers,” Rachel says.
The mentors on the youth unemployment programme advised Matt for a year after he completed the course, and told him he might be aiming at roles one rung up on the career ladder. “They suggested I would take a step back and give a first step job more of a go,” Matt says. He now works in TK Maxx, and is applying to the RAF. “It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do, and to build my confidence back up, but getting a job really helped me into the mindset of thinking about what I want long-term.”
In Nuala’s* house in Bridgewater, Somerset, tensions have reached boiling point. Her 24-year-old son went to a small fee-paying secondary school, and then graduated from a Russell Group university in June 2024 with a first-class degree. He is yet to find a job. He worked hard during his BA; he had ideas about his future, including software testing and programming. Yet, since he returned home that summer after exams finished, he’s done, as Nuala puts it, “absolutely nothing.”
Nuala is an occupational therapist, and her husband works as a strategy director at a product management firm. They have a comfortable life and were initially happy to let their only child enjoy his time off after graduation. After the summer, they suggested he get some part-time work or volunteer while he figured out his future. But so far, no future plans appear to have formed. Instead, he’s been sleeping in, chatting to friends online and playing video games, Nuala says. “He’ll walk the dog when we ask him to, and we give him household chores, but otherwise he just hangs about. It’s been two years of this.”
Nuala and her husband have tried everything they can think of. Even though they can offer more support than most UK families, they fear their son is in the most competitive conditions in history for job-seeking, not to mention AI automating some entry-level roles. “This has been the toughest, most confusing two years of parenting I’ve had by a long way, and I feel on some level that we’ve failed.”
Nuala’s husband recently reached the end of his tether and told their son to apply for jobs from morning till night, and to have a job or volunteering by the end of the month, or he’ll be sleeping in a tent in the garden. “It caused a massive blow-up, but after a couple of nights sleeping outside during the heatwave, our son did as we’d begged, and went into the local care home to apply for some admin shifts.”
For Roxy*, a CEO of a small charity in London, helping her 26-year-old daughter into employment has been one of the toughest jobs of her life. Roxy’s daughter dropped out of university at the end of her second year due to her mental health rapidly declining. “She became very anxious and withdrawn, and developed intrusive thoughts,” Roxy explains.
For 18 months after finishing her course, Roxy’s daughter “was sending endless CVs, applying for everything. I gave her loads of help, and explored all the contacts I have to help her. She became more and more certain that she had no future, no prospects, and no worth. It was heart-wrenching.”
Roxy felt it was crucial not to judge her daughter’s lack of employment, but also to make sure she was doing something. “I got her to babysit our neighbour’s kids, do some dog-sitting, volunteering, and things that filled her time and got her back out into the world. It’s so much harder than it was when I started applying for jobs. Endless tasks and psychometric tests, just for the simplest jobs, and then she would hear nothing back.”
Eventually, her daughter got some work via a temping agency, gaining experience in a variety of workplaces. Her confidence grew, and now, she’s decided she’d like to be a teaching assistant, and maybe do a PGCE. “I am so happy, I could cry,” Roxy says.
A 24-year-old who has been Neet and re-enters the labour market can expect to have lost an estimated £300,000 in lifetime earnings, according to the Milburn report. On a state level, the cumulative annual cost of Neets is put at £125 billion, more than the entire education budget.
More crucial, though, are the non-financial costs. According to Milburn’s research, work is about connection, self-respect and independence. One of the biggest myths that Milburn has sought to debunk is that young people today are simply less employable. Nearly 30 per cent of Neets have good GCSES or equivalent, and 15 per cent have a degree. Yet, there is an increasing dearth of entry-level roles, and the ones that do exist are more competitive. Recruitment has become more automated, and competition for degree apprenticeships in England has quadrupled over the past three years. The BBC found that applicants said they applied to university as a “backup” because competition was so fierce, with employers cutting back on hiring because of high employment costs and economic uncertainty.
While previously a top degree might have been enough to quickly secure a top job, things have changed for many graduates. When asked about youth unemployment, one respondent says that their family friend Rob* graduated in maths at Oxford with a first-class degree, and thought every graduate scheme would want to snap him up.
“He initially applied for a few things,” says Rob’s friend, “but when he didn’t get offers, he stopped. He was not paying rent, not contributing towards bills, and was procrastinating applying because he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. His parents knew his mental health wasn’t great, and they were sympathetic to it. There was a full year of doing nothing, and then he started applying for things again. In the end, through his dad’s connections, he did manage to get onto a training scheme to be an actuary.”
The Youth Futures Foundation, a charity helping young people find – and keep – good jobs, says, “The issue is not a lack of aspiration among young people. Too often, it is a lack of the right opportunities, support and relationships at the moments they matter most. Understanding the drivers behind rising Neet rates matters because it shows that change is possible.”
As Roxy puts it: “The sense of failure is acute in a young person; they internalise it very quickly. Let’s not demonise them. It’s a tough economy, but we have to keep chipping away, supporting our kids, and believing they will find their way.”
*names have been changed for anonymity
For advice and support, contact youth employment charity SPEAR
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