Give mayors more powers to tackle youth unemployment crisis, says Alan Milburn | Youth unemployment
Mayors in England must be given more powers to tackle the youth unemployment crisis and prevent “long-term scarring” in areas outside London, the government’s labor tsar has said.
Alan Milburn, who is leading a major review into rising youth inactivity in Britain, said the problem could not be solved by Whitehall alone.
Most of the approximately 1 million unemployed, uneducated and uneducated young people (Neets) live in the north and Midlands. 8 of the 10 local governments with the highest number of Neets are located in these two regions.
In an interview with the Guardian, Milburn said: “Local authorities and mayors have an absolutely critical role to play because they have the power to bring together, they can bring schools, colleges and employers together in an area.
“They have some legal powers. I think we’ll see if those legal powers go far enough.”
The former health minister added: “They have some authority over education but there’s a real question about whether they should have more responsibility to reduce NEET rates, whether they should have more responsibility in terms of skills and employment support because if this is to be addressed as an issue it has to be addressed locally as well as nationally.”
The latest official figures from the Office for National Statistics show unemployment rising to 5.2% in the last quarter of 2025; This rate is the highest rate since the beginning of 2021. Young people bear the brunt of this increase; 16% of 16-24 year olds unemployed, the highest level in almost 11 years.
In the northeast, 17.3% of young people are not working or studying, a rate well above the national average. In Yorkshire and Humberside, 16.8% of young people are Neets.
Milburn said Neets, 24, was “horrified” to learn that 45 per cent had never had a job and that it would “leave long-term scarring” on their lives.
The social mobility expert has promised there will be no “no-go” areas for his research, which will publish an interim update in May ahead of full recommendations in September. It will examine the role of the welfare state and the NHS in youth unemployment.
He said the review team was in “very active conversations” with mayors and local officials “about how we can ensure that they are very active participants in solving this problem.”
A panel of health, business and policy experts, including former John Lewis boss Charlie Mayfield, former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane and social welfare expert Dame Louise Casey, will help prepare the recommendations.
Speaking during a visit to an adult employment center in Bradford, Milburn said he was trying to “ignite a movement for change” beyond Westminster on youth unemployment.
Asked whether he was concerned that economic shocks from conflict in the Middle East would derail the government’s domestic agenda, including tackling the youth unemployment crisis, Milburn said the issue was the most “visceral” one he had studied in three decades of public life.
“This speaks to a deep sense of anxiety and indeed fear in the British public, and the job of politicians is to dispel that fear and, frankly, provide some hope for the future,” he said.
“I’ve never encountered anything like this in the 30 years or anything I’ve been involved with in politics and public policy. This has attracted more public attention than any issue I’ve ever dealt with.”
“Although this is a group of around a million young people, what the public is concerned about is the generational challenges of young people in this generation being worse off than their parents or grandparents, and this is the first time in a hundred years that this has been the case.
“There is a fear in British society that the contract that each generation will perform better than the last has been broken.”
