Labour to expand youth work experience and training schemes | Youth unemployment

Ministers are expanding youth work experience and training plans after Alan Milburn warned that for every £1 Britain spends on helping young people get into work, it spends £25 on keeping young people on benefits.

Work and Pensions Minister Pat McFadden will unveil plans for 300,000 extra work experience placements over the next three years as Labor seeks to tackle what the minister describes as a “silent crisis” in youth employment.

While nearly 1 million people aged 16 to 24 are neither in education, employment nor training (Neet), McFadden warns that almost 60% of them are not employed at all.

“This is a silent crisis, a ticking time bomb that puts their future working lives at risk,” he said, adding: “It’s hardest for young people who don’t have family connections. There’s no job because they don’t have experience, they don’t have experience because they don’t have a job.”

McFadden told the Guardian that many traditional “first-line” jobs have disappeared as retail employment declines and the pandemic has negatively impacted young people’s workplace experience. “Talent is evenly distributed across the country, but opportunities are not,” he said.

New analysis for the DWP shows that young people who took part in the scheme were 13% more likely to be in work after two years than their counterparts who did not take part, while four in 10 were in permanent employment within six months.

About half of the placements will come through industry-based job academy programs known as Swaps, which are six-week training programs with guaranteed job interviews at the end.

Nearly 100,000 Clearings took place in 2025-26, according to DWP figures, with 25,000 young people aged 16-24 – a record number – starting this year. Ministers are targeting 115,000 jobs next year.

McFadden’s remarks and the expansion of the plan came as Milburn warned the country was becoming “negligent” about a generation struggling to access job and educational opportunities.

“It’s a real shame,” Milburn told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg program on Sunday. “We, as a society and as a policy, have neglected something that is frankly scandalous.”

Ministers are spending far more to support those out of work than to help young people into employment, he said in a stunning assessment of Britain’s welfare system.

“For every £25 we spend getting young people on benefits, we spend just £1 helping them get into work through employment support,” he said.

The government hopes that expanding Swaps can help reverse this trend.

Construction took place with almost 17,000 starts, making it the largest Swap sector; Employers such as Manchester Airport Group, JD and Gatwick airport were supporting expanded settlements.

Milburn said Britain was facing a generational crisis in which the “old contract in society” was breaking down.

“The old contract in society was that each generation would perform better than the last. So this is the first generation where that contract has been broken,” he said.

It also highlighted a sharp increase in the number of young people reporting work-limiting health conditions, particularly those linked to mental health and neurodiversity.

“This is a real thing, not a fake thing,” he said. “This is a generation that lives with more trouble, more anxiety.”

But he said the state has become more comfortable managing young people outside of the workforce rather than integrating them into the workforce.

“The question is, just because you have a diagnosis or health issue, why should that lead you into the benefits world instead of the business world?”