One million lives.
Nearly one million young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK are not in education, employment or training. One in eight. And rising.
I’ve been reading Alan Milburn’s interim review on young people and the labour market. Some of it stopped me in my tracks.
On what’s actually out there:
‘The youth share of the labour market has decreased even as employment overall has increased. Entry-level roles have become less plentiful and more demanding. The young person who once might have walked into a shop, spoken to a manager and been given a chance is now screened by a portal, a test, a recorded interview or an algorithm before anyone has looked them in the eye.’
On what employers are finding:
‘Many young people arrive in the workplace with anxiety, low confidence and, in some cases, health needs employers do not feel equipped to support. The safer hire is the older worker with experience. The young person with potential but no track record loses out.’
And yet — on what Milburn actually found when he spoke to young people directly:
‘In almost every conversation there was an interest, a passion, a talent just under the surface. Too often those strengths had gone unnoticed and overshadowed by the labels attached to them.’
That last line is the one that matters. The strengths are there. They’re just not visible — not to employers, and often not to the young people themselves.
That’s the problem I’ve been trying to do something about. I’ve been building an app that helps young people ask people who know them well for real stories of their strengths in action — then contextualises those stories against specific job descriptions, giving them evidence-based guidance on how to present what they genuinely bring.
I’m looking for a group of young people who are struggling to find work, willing to try the app at no cost, and prepared to tell me honestly whether it’s made a difference — to their applications and to their confidence.
If you know someone this might help, please share this with them.
www.3sixty.me