Young people are no longer prepared for the workplace because of the decline of the Saturday job, Labour’s employment tsar has claimed.
Alan Milburn, a health secretary under Tony Blair, said that teenagers increasingly “aren’t work ready” owing to the slump in weekend work outside of school hours.
He suggested that the trend would have to be reversed if the Government wanted to “avoid a lost generation”, adding that it was “too lazy” simply to blame young people.
Fewer than one in five 16 and 17-year-olds were in work at the end of 2024, compared with half at the start of the century.
Mr Milburn is currently head of an independent investigation into factors behind the rise in youth inactivity, which has been described as a “crisis of opportunity”.
He told The Times: “There’s been a longstanding decline in 16 and 17-year-olds getting Saturday jobs.
“Previous generations, including mine, were all brought up where most of us had that type of job or had a paper round or whatever.
“That not only provided youngsters with the opportunity to earn but it also allowed teenagers to learn about what it meant to be in a workplace.
“They became familiar with things like the discipline of being on time. It’s too lazy to just blame today’s youngsters for not being work-ready.”
“Over many years those opportunities for young people have been in sharp decline. Since the pandemic, the number of young people in work has fallen.
“The rate of youth unemployment is rising. If we are to avoid a lost generation we have to find new ways of reversing those trends.”
Workless young people
Almost a million young people are classified as Neets (not in education, employment, or training), which is around one in eight young people aged 16 to 24.
According to the latest figures, the gulf between workless young men and women in the UK has widened significantly.
While the number of male Neets rose by 15,000 (3 per cent) to 512,000 in the three months to September last year, the number of female Neets fell by 16,000 (3.8 per cent) to 434,000.
Mr Milburn said the goal of the independent review was to ensure every young person was given the opportunity to “learn how to work”.
He said: “Young people don’t necessarily have work experience, and what they have learnt at school isn’t necessarily pertinent for the world of work. So we’ve got to look at both of these issues and we will be.”
The former chief secretary to the Treasury expects resistance from Government departments and Labour backbenchers, given some of the proposals include tackling young people’s poor mental health allowing them to claim benefits.
The review will work alongside a panel of health, labour market experts and employers, as well as engaging with young people who have disabilities and mental health diagnoses.
Interim findings are expected in spring, with a final report to be published in summer.