According to the Office for National Statistics, nearly one million young people in the UK aged 16 to 24 were not in education, employment or training at the end of 2025.
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Young people struggling to get their first jobs may simply be unprepared to enter the workforce, having missed out on important social developments during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unemployment among Gen Z is increasing, with nearly one million young people in the UK aged 16 to 24 becoming NEET (not in education, employment or training) between July and September 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The government deemed it a crisis and launched an independent inquiry into NEET in December, led by former Labor health secretary Alan Milburn.
Alarmingly, the ONS report also revealed that around 600,000 unemployed young people are not actively looking for work.
Young people face several challenges in the job market until artificial intelligence eliminates entry-level positions and increases competition for jobs. There were more than 1.2 million applications for just 17,000 postgraduate roles in the UK last year, according to the UK Student Employers Association.
Meanwhile, the number of job openings in the September-November period fell by nearly 10% compared to the same period last year, to 729,000, according to an ONS survey. The number of unemployed people per vacancy from August to October was 2.5, up from 1.8 a year earlier.
Economic conditions aren’t the only culprit: Employers and experts say Gen Z is ill-prepared to join the workforce.
In a recent interview, Mr Milburn told the Times that when young people leave school and then start full-time jobs, employers feel they are “not ready for work”. “Young people don’t necessarily have work experience and what they learn in school is not necessarily relevant to the world of work.”
intergenerational lockdown
UK-based charity Shaw Trust is working to help people find work and end the NEET crisis. In an interview with CNBC Make It, Chief Impact Officer Julie Leonard talked about how virtual learning and living at home during the 2020 lockdown created a socialization gap, especially for Gen Z, ages 20 to 24.
“There are a lot of young people who have missed out on years of in-person education, work experience, work-ready skills and soft skills, and are now finding themselves in a very difficult job market as adults, and a completely different hiring environment for many years,” Leonard said.
Soft skills such as leading a team, collaborating, and following directions are “core to being work-ready” and are being “missed out” by Gen Z.
Many young people were not forced to step out of their comfort zones, such as talking to strangers or coming to school or work on time, she added.
Councilor Milburn explained that young people cannot be blamed for not being ready to work, saying opportunities for young people are “in sharp decline”.
“The number of 16- and 17-year-olds getting jobs on Saturdays has been declining for many years,” Milburn said in comments reported by the Times. “Previous generations, including myself, mostly grew up in an environment where we had to do that kind of work, document screening, etc. This not only gave young people the opportunity to earn money, but it also allowed them to learn what it meant to be in the workplace.
Mr Leonard said part-time jobs such as babysitting, gardening and delivering newspapers were “essential” to help young people get used to the discipline of work. “We’ve lost a very important stepping stone approach,” she says.
In fact, Big Four employers such as KPMG and PWC recognize that their youngest new employees lack important work etiquette skills such as communication and collaboration.
PWC will begin offering resilience training to strengthen new hires in 2025, pointing to a shortage of “human skills” due to the pandemic. In 2023, KPMG began offering soft skills sessions, such as teamwork and presentation techniques, for young recruits.
request work directly
Rather than sitting behind a screen and sending out countless resumes that will ultimately be rejected by AI, Leonard recommends going back to old-fashioned tactics to secure a job.
In fact, now that job hunting has become digitally centered, many young people are sending in resumes written by AI. “It’s become so impersonal that you often send emails and don’t get any response, which is very discouraging,” Leonard said.
Visit your local store and request a job, advises Shaw Trust Chief Impact Officer Julie Leonard.
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“What you’re really doing is building your CV, walking down the high street, having someone walk with you, and giving you the resilience and confidence to go and say, ‘I want a job,'” she advised, noting that this is training that Shaw Trust advisers often do with young people.
The types of stores where this strategy is most likely to be successful include local independent businesses, bars, cafes, and other small businesses.
“You walk in there with your resume, you talk to the manager, you start opening the door. That’s the type of work we do. Holding hands, getting back on your feet, developing the confidence to step out. It’s not just sitting behind a laptop and just sending out a resume,” Leonard added.
