Can we talk about NEETs?

[MrsBennetsPoorNervesAreBack]

Sorry if there's a thread already and I've missed it. But I want to talk about NEETs.

Apparently, we are potentially going to have 1.25million young people not in employment, education or training by the early 2030s. This is quite an alarming number, and it feels like we're failing an entire generation - both the NEETs themselves, who don't seem to have very much going on in their lives that might give them a sense of satisfaction or achievement, but also their working peers who will presumably end up having to support them via the tax system.

I really don't want this to be a thread with lots of judgement or criticism of these young people - it seems to me that we must have failed them somehow as a society. I also want to steer clear of party politics if we can. But I really want to understand why we have so many young people in this position right now.

Does anyone have a child in this situation who would be willing to share why they find themselves in this position? What are the barriers to them studying or getting at least a part time job? Are they happy with how things are right now? Are they trying to change their situation? What do they actually do all day? Are they surrounded by friends who are in the same position? What do they do about money? And what do you feel about the whole situation as a parent?

If anyone is willing to share, I really hope we can avoid a pile-on in which the young people and/or their parents are subjected to a character assassination. I would like an honest and frank exchange of views and experiences because I do genuinely want to understand the root causes of this issue, but if it descends into blame and fingerpointing, then the whole conversation will get derailed.

For full disclosure, I do have a dc in the middle of the 16-24 age group, but neither she nor any of her friends fall into this category.

Excellent post. I agree with all of this.

This isn’t what’s happening. Uni graduates are sending hundreds of application out for menial jobs. Youngsters with just GCSE’s are doing the same. Neither are getting even an interview.

One caller on Jeremy vine was saying how her son applied for a supermarket job within minutes for him to be turned down from the process by a bot. We’ve noticed bots being used for supermarket jobs too and it’s laughably crap.

Have skipped to the end so not read all the posts but have been enraged by fat cat industrial types over the last few days living in the 70s and 80s and basically saying if YPs would just get their foot on the ladder and get low paid jobs they would work their way up like they did themselves.

My DS is at the top end of this age range and has actually expressed suicidal thoughts that he will reach 25 and still be living at home with no prospects, doing click and collect at a local store. He isn't NEET as he has a job - but this is a 16 hour a week , minimum wage job in retail.

This experience has not made him look 'useful' to employers. Not even the company he works for shortlisted him for a grad scheme. He has applied for 100s of graduate and non graduate jobs. He has a degree, a master's, and experience working in 4 different retailers/ schools and hospitality. People often simply say 'could he not do this to gain skills?' (often, they suggest, for free) . He already works, paid, to gain skills and can't get out of where he is.He spends lots of his free time filling in job applications. Lots of companies don't even acknowledge applications and plenty of jobs on Indeed are 'ghost jobs'. Both of my DSs have had interviews where they haven't even been told outcomes. It is genuinely depressing. There are all the NEETS and on top of this there are those who are 'stuck' like DS.

It doesn't help that companies like Trailfinders won't shortlist people to work in their low paid sales roles unless they have travelled beyond Europe already (which clearly many cannot afford to do ) and Connells estate agents specified (until a young woman outed them to the BBC!) that applicants must have cars newer than 10 years old... these things are pretty blatant indirect discrimination .

I don't know what the solution is but providing bits and bobs of work experience and suggesting a minimum wage job or two will lead to successful employment don't seem like remedies form where DS is sitting.

It also doesn't help that AI filters applications.

I’m glad you brought up the workplace because the conditions of employment itself has changed. It’s not ‘just’ the attitudes or character traits of young people. Twenty years ago if you were socially awkward there were more jobs available, less demanding jobs, and more entry level jobs. Both offshoring and also with technology advancement there’s been work intensification have changed the job types available in the UK. Plus, much more use of technology that doesn’t fit with many people’s skills set, workplaces ask fewer employees to do more, GenAI takes the mundane, data entry work a more anxious person might be comfortable doing and leaves the cognitively complex work for humans. Employers add on more and more tasks to roles and never reduces them. With more demanding workplaces on the one hand, and seemingly a rise in anxious young people on the other, makes an extremely worrying scenario.

Well, I guess there's different types of clever. He did well academically, is brilliant with people, but needed a bit of advice about wrting applications.
The sort of jobs he can go for has 100s of applicants.
I think the sensible thing to do after failing to get work after a month or so is to ask other people to improve your CV and to learn job hunting techniques.
If you were my friend and you had failed at getting 60 interviews in a competitive field. I would suggest that you got some training on how to do interviews better as you obviously a brilliant at doing the application but not so great at the next steps.
I would also argue, having recently recruited that there are currently nothing that isn't a competitive field. We had quadruple the normal number of applicants to our often advertised post.

Some people talk about bad attitudes to work, but I remember my Dad saying in the nineties how the latest generation had a different work ethic. They didn't want to be there. One youth put his feet up on the desk of the HR rep (a horrible woman by all accounts), and got himself fired.

And its only going to get much, much worse with the new unfair dismissal rights. In the past companies might have taken a bit of a risk to give a young person a chance because you could dismiss fairly easily (harsh as that sounds).

I did it a lot, would see something in a wet behind the ears kid and give them a shot. When I attend networking events other employers say the same, and we all agree that just wont happen anymore as interviews will become more rigorous and there will be less appetite to give someone a go.

My son went for a McJob type job last week. The application took 40 mins and was basically a written interview, 2 psychometric tests, F2F group interview with 15 others and they had to work together to design the perfect sandwich and the perfect store to sell it in, complete with advertising strategy.

This was for a zero hour cleaning job. Wtf.

Eta - he didnt get it btw, assumes he missed out to the 50-odd year old that was there who he said sort of took charge and bossed them around. Fair enough I understand them preferring someone experienced. Not the first time ive heard of companies favouring older workers either. Why not when its now only a couple of quid more to employ them?

The percentages are still low 1-3% . Numbers increased because we are better aware and autism and adhd in women and girls (who were ignored by the diagnosis process for many many years) are better recognised. Both conditions are actually under diagnosed in the uk.

Appallingly abelist posters like the ones below like to dismiss and bash both conditions.

My DC are younger than this, early teens. But one DC was off school for a few days sick recently and I was thinking how different a sick day is now than it was for us.

We had nothing to watch on tv, no video consoles to play with, watching Neighbours twice a day was the only highlight… We could only communicate with our friends through the landline and we couldn’t keep that tied up for long. So in the end we were almost desperate to get out of the house and back to school.

I do think now, staying at home is a much nicer option than it was for previous generations. They can chat, play with their friends online, shop and date online, and get fed and looked after by their parents. The impetus to leave the house is massively reduced and I do think this has played a part (just a part, not at all meaning to generalise) in why some young people haven’t got that get up and go.

We have created golden prisons for them, and when life outside that prison is tough, hard work, with no guarantee of success, I can see why the option of staying put is appealing.

No one is denying that the state of the jobs market in the UK is not good at present. But this is not the first time it has not been good. For the posters complaining that their children have been to hundreds of interviews and only got a minimum wage job at the end, however, a bit of reflection and honest assessment as to why that might be is worth considering.

Given "what happened 40 years ago" (not that long for me, thank you very much, more like 15-20) doesn't impress you, how about this. I was recently asked to talk to a friend's A-level age teenager about next steps as said teenager was contemplating a career in my field. This young person was seriously impressive: had a plan and a back up plan, had a list of questions for me that were well thought-out, pertinent and realistic, understood the effort that she would have to put in, and understood that she was on a path and she had to stay on it in order to get the best job she could. I have no doubt that young people like that, who understand their abilities, have researched the route they are going to take and approach it realistically, understanding the work involved, will be successful. This is irrespective of whether they are on a university, apprenticeship or other track. Everyone has skills and abilities they can maximise - they just have to be prepared and (crucially) understand what is involved in that. We are signally failing them in my view because they clearly do not.

Part of this as well, I am afraid, is that we have given children an unrealistic view of what they can achieve. There will always be people who have to do minimum wage jobs. There will always have to be people who do "menial" jobs (though I do not consider any job to be menial if you approach it in the right way, so right there I think is an example of the attitude that may pervade and be causing some of the issues - no work is beneath anyone). Given the number of children in "higher" education and "university" who might quite reasonably think that their efforts in education entitle them to something better, there are simply not enough "good" jobs. And this is where the preparation comes in. I have no doubt that any number of journalism or sociology courses would have taken my friend's child like a shot, but they knew that there was no point getting that sort of degree because there aren't the job opportunities to support it. Back in the day, I wanted to be a forensic pathologist, but I didn't do medicine because I knew, at the end of all the training there was a vanishingly small chance one of the few jobs in that field would be mine. It was too big a risk. So I did a non-vocational degree in a traditional academic subject, and then pivoted into a profession afterwards. My degree allowed me to do that because I went to a university renowned for its rigour, in a degree subject considered to be a "proper" subject.

We don't interview like they did when I was interviewing (my university and subject being enough to open a lot of doors) but I can tell you, even interviewing blind we can almost always tell which candidates have been through a rigorous academic training and which have not. The former are almost always from "traditional" universities.

I am sorry your child is struggling (I'm sorry, I don't recall you from any other threads) and all or none of this might apply to your child. But just as what someone did 40 years ago, and what I did 15 years ago aren't indicative of the whole, neither is your child's struggle. There is - in my view - an endemic problem with how we infantilise and medicalise our children. They are likely not going into the world of work prepared for what it entails. Where that is obvious, they will struggle to get jobs. Of course your child with additional difficulties will struggle more; but, and I say this gently, why do you think this would not have been the case 10, 20, 30 40 years ago? Employers want the minimum amount of hassle - unfortunately those with additional needs at least appear not to be that. But again, I'm dubious that that has changed. Yes, they should make reasonable adjustments, but are there reasonable adjustments that can be made for your son? It will depend on the job, but presumably he would be a big risk in any job where speaking to clients/customers is part of it? That will rule out a lot of jobs.

I also think zero hours contracts and fat cat hypocritical employers such as Next don’t help.

I had a NEET last year. He doesn't claim benefits, so that's not an incentive.

He did well in his GCSEs with passes in English and As in maths and sciences. He went to 6th form to do A levels, but that's when he started to struggle. The school tested him for learning difficulties and said he did have some kind of processing issue, but they couldn't put a name to it. He passed A levels in maths and sciences, but at very low grades and he struggled with study, so university isn't really an option for him, nor does he want to do a degree. He is intelligent and clever with practical things, but academic work doesn't suit him.

After A levels he wasn't sure what to do so we thought he should get a job while considering a long term plan. Well that turned out to be a problem. He applied to every shop or hospitality vacancy locally over a period of about a year. McDonald's (3 times), pubs, restaurants, you name it. All the supermarkets have online tests and he was rejected before even getting an interview. I tried a few and I got rejected too. When he did get a few interviews, he was frequently up against people in their 30s + with years of work experience and lost out to them. These were minimum wage, entry jobs in cafes etc.

He doesn't have any mental illness or neuro diversity issues that we know of, he does want to work, but I can believe he isn't very chatty and smiley with strangers, a trait shared with many teenage boys.

Anyway, after a year of this, I arranged a session with the local careers service and they recommended a practical workshop based NVQ 3 engineering course at the local college. He enjoys the course and did also finally get a part time job in hospitality, so he is no longer a NEET.

Having said that, he has decided he wants to do an apprenticeship as a mechanic and is having the same issues as before - lots more people want these apprenticeships than there are places and so far he has failed to get a place and now most of the places have gone. So it looks like another year of college and reapplying next year, he's now 20.

So even though he's no longer a NEET, he's still not in full time employment. I don't think it's his fault, the job situation is really, really hard now for everyone, but especially the young.

The thing is , you need to be in a fairly decent financial situation already to be able to just volunteer with the hope of maybe getting a job. Transport costs at the very least.

I was talking about this with DS (18) yesterday. He is starting to notice his peers that are dropping off from college (dropping out a month before the end sort of things) and others bouncing jobs because nowhere is right. The pattern that he is seeing is that these are the kids of the parents who went in to school to sort every problem, were planning / prioritising / helping to do homework right up until leaving school. They always got good OK grades because parents never gave them a chance to fail.

I don't think you can blame the young person for being completely unprepared for life when they have been spoonfed everything up until leaving school.

I know of one student who sent out 800 job applications, got 7 interviews and felt ecstatic to be offered one job.

AI and computer interviews are making it so hard for youngsters to get a foot in the door. For a two to four week internship, uni students go through three separate interview processes including HireVue, personality testing and cognitive tests. One was asked to solve quadratic equations holding his hands in the air in a computer interview. It’s insane levels of expectations.

My son went for a McJob type job last week. The application took 40 mins and was basically a written interview, 2 psychometric tests, F2F group interview with 15 others and they had to work together to design the perfect sandwich and the perfect store to sell it in, complete with advertising strategy.
This was for a zero hour cleaning job. Wtf

This is the sort of ridiculous scenario that fills me with dread. There are plenty of non-customer facing jobs my DD could do perfectly well but she would never manage this sort of process.

You people are doing all that and still not getting jobs. There is no backup plan when there are no jobs to be had.

To add, my DS has applied for lots of the apparent shortage roles - been told 'oh, they'll snap you up'. They all have sifts which he repeatedly fails (this is very well known in the police). I work in the public sector and sat and did two sifts with him. Failed.

You certainly don't just walk into social work, police work, probation service. He has tried TA work but really hated working in a school (nevertheless he has a year's experience of it). He has applied for trainee roles in various council sectors. He has applied out of the local area.

The characterisation of young people as overly choosy and idle is not helpful.

10 - 15 years ago NEETs were often YPs with few qualifications , often they had dropped out of school and had a range of social issues . This is really no longer the case. They form a subset of a very large and disparate group.

The benefits system will collapse within a few years, it simply isn't sustainable. People can't imagine it now, but plenty of countries around the world don't give our financial aid to people with nothing. It will be a massive societal shift whereby anyone who CAN gets a job, any job, and anyone who can't lives with other family members and helps at home in any way they can.
In some countries the most vulnerable are sent out to beg and can be a family's cash cow. That's a worst case scenario.

I think the rise of things like self checkouts has meant the erasure of many entry level jobs, so competition for the few roles there still are is much higher, plus higher costs for employers in terms of insurance, NI etc means they either aren’t hiring or can generally take their pick of more experienced candidates. For those young people who want to work hard and will do anything but don’t have any experience it’s really hard to be the top candidate.

I also see a subset of that generation coming through who have been allowed to live online and who have been constantly told that they can do anything and the world must just mould to their unique desires and preferences. They aren’t able to cope when the world then just doesn’t.

AI and automation is taking away a huge amount of entry level jobs and will continue to reduce them rapidly over the next 5-10 years.

Minimum wage is high so that employers are choosing experienced people instead - then the experienced people get shafted by being stuck on the lower pay scale for years.

People have less money to spend on eating out and shopping - so less bar, coffee, retail jobs available to get experience in teenage years.

In 1993 there were around 923k NEETS . It’s not a new problem.

There are jobs for teens.

Where I live the summer clubs are desperate for sixth formers to work in holidays, but lots seem to expect to travel/go on holiday after exams. When I was at school we all worked the summer after A levels!

Alan Milburn just about to be interviewed on radio4 now

Ironically, countries with low levels of social care have very high rates of unemployment/NEETS , and countries with great social care(the Netherlands for example), have very low levels of NEETS. But they put the work in, put the funds in and came up with long term, sustainable policies that actually work.