The latest evidence on youth employment in the UK presents a difficult picture. Although the number of young people not in education, employment or training has fallen compared with the previous quarter, it remains higher than a year ago. At the same time, employers are reducing entry-level recruitment, graduate vacancies have fallen to their lowest level in a decade, and artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape some of the junior roles through which young people traditionally enter the workplace.
The pressures on youth employment extend beyond the number of vacancies available. Recruitment practices, requirements for previous experience and socioeconomic barriers can all make it harder for young people to secure an initial foothold in work.
Against that background, the Government has begun rolling out its Jobs Guarantee, designed to provide subsidised employment to young people who have experienced prolonged unemployment. The scheme forms part of a wider attempt to improve youth employment outcomes at a time when the first step into work is becoming increasingly difficult.
In Brief
The latest youth employment figures show that almost one million young people remain outside education, employment or training at a time when entry-level and graduate opportunities are contracting. Young people are also facing greater competition for junior roles, while AI is beginning to remove or reshape some of the routine work traditionally used to gain early workplace experience. The Government’s Jobs Guarantee aims to improve access to work, but employers will also have an important role in preserving meaningful entry routes and recruiting for potential as well as previous experience.
Key Points
- An estimated 981,000 people aged 16 to 24 were not in education, employment or training between April and June 2026, equivalent to 13% of young people.
- Starter vacancies accessible to people entering work for the first time have fallen by 49% over the past decade, while experienced candidates are increasingly competing for some entry-level roles.
- AI and automation are adding further pressure to youth employment, with 43% of employers surveyed by the Work Foundation saying investment in technology had reduced the number of entry-level roles available.
- Graduate recruitment has also weakened sharply: Adzuna recorded just 8,383 graduate vacancies in July 2026, the lowest monthly total since its records began in 2016.
- Recruitment practices can create additional barriers where employers place unnecessary weight on previous experience, particular qualifications or subjective ideas of “culture fit”, potentially disadvantaging young people who have not yet had the opportunity to build workplace experience or professional networks.
- The Jobs Guarantee is expected to create more than 90,000 fully funded jobs over three years, but improving youth employment will also depend on employers maintaining genuine entry-level opportunities, providing training and progression, and adapting junior roles as technology changes the workplace.
Youth Employment: Almost One Million Young People Remain NEET
The latest Office for National Statistics figures estimate that 981,000 people aged 16 to 24 were not in education, employment or training (NEET) between April and June 2026. This represented a fall of 30,000 compared with the previous quarter, but an increase of 30,000 compared with the same period in 2025.
Overall, 13% of young people were NEET. The rate was higher among young men, at 13.7%, compared with 12.3% among young women. Of the total, 530,000 were young men and 451,000 were young women.
The figures also distinguish between young people who are unemployed and those who are economically inactive. Some 393,000 NEET young people were classified as unemployed, meaning that they were actively seeking and available for work. A further 588,000 were economically inactive. The number of unemployed young men who were NEET increased by 24,000 over the year, while the equivalent figure for young women increased by 3,000.
The quarterly fall is encouraging, but it should be interpreted cautiously. The ONS itself warns that NEET estimates can be volatile because they concern a relatively small population subgroup. The longer-term youth employment position remains troubling: the proportion of young people who were NEET was still higher than a year earlier.
The Government’s independent Young People and Work review provides further context. It found that 61.6% of young people who are NEET have never had a job, compared with 42% around 20 years ago. That matters because the longer someone remains detached from the labour market, the harder it may become to acquire workplace experience, references, confidence and professional networks. Improving youth employment therefore requires more than reducing headline unemployment; it requires realistic routes into a first job.
Youth Employment and the Shrinking Entry-Level Jobs Market
The challenge is not simply that more young people need support. The number of jobs through which they can enter the labour market is also shrinking, placing further pressure on youth employment.
Research by the Work Foundation at Lancaster University found that 36% of employers had reduced entry-level jobs for 16–24-year-olds during the previous 12 months. The proportion rose to 48% among medium-sized employers and 46% among large organisations, compared with 24% among small employers.
Earlier Work Foundation analysis found that average weekly “starter” vacancies accessible to somebody entering employment for the first time had fallen by 49% between 2016–17 and 2025–26. By late 2025, there was only around one starter vacancy for every three young people who were NEET.
The pressure is not limited to the fall in vacancies. As we have previously examined, experienced workers are increasingly applying for entry-level jobs, meaning younger candidates may also be competing against applicants with substantial workplace experience. This further intensifies the youth employment challenge.
Employers themselves recognise the scale of the youth employment problem. Some 73% described youth worklessness as a national crisis, while 76% agreed that employers have a responsibility to do more to support young people into employment.
Importantly, the findings do not support a simple narrative that young people are generally unprepared for employment. Three in five employers—60%—said young people aged 16 to 24 were generally ready for the world of work.
The difficulty is that recruitment criteria may nevertheless favour applicants who have already had opportunities to gain experience. Some 63% of employers prioritised educational qualifications and 62% prioritised previous work experience when recruiting at entry level.
That creates an obvious difficulty for somebody trying to secure a first job: employers may regard experience as desirable precisely when the candidate has had little opportunity to acquire it. In youth employment terms, the result is a market in which the people most in need of a first opportunity can be disadvantaged by the absence of the experience that first opportunity is supposed to provide.
AI Is Reshaping Entry-Level Work
Artificial intelligence and automation are also changing the structure of junior employment and, with it, the future youth employment pipeline.
The Work Foundation found that 43% of employers said investment in AI or automation had reduced the number of entry-level roles available, rising to 60% among large employers. Some 44% had also used AI or automated systems to screen job applications.
The Bank of England has separately reported that businesses are using automation to reduce demand for junior and administrative work, including tasks involving document preparation, invoice processing and basic analysis.
This creates a longer-term workforce problem. Routine work has traditionally provided new employees with a route into organisations and an opportunity to develop the judgement and experience required for more senior positions. Removing repetitive tasks may improve efficiency today, but employers still need to consider how tomorrow’s experienced employees will acquire their initial training.
For many organisations, the answer may not be to preserve junior roles unchanged. Instead, entry-level jobs may need to be redesigned around activities that remain distinctly human, echoing Bill Gates’s argument that some areas of work should remain “Human Reserved” as AI takes on more routine tasks. These roles could place greater emphasis on communication, judgement, problem-solving, client interaction and checking or supervising AI-generated work. A sustainable youth employment strategy will therefore require employers to redesign entry routes, not simply automate them away.
Graduate Vacancies Fall to Record Low
The deterioration in youth employment opportunities is particularly pronounced in graduate recruitment.
Adzuna recorded just 8,383 graduate vacancies in July 2026, down from 15,397 a year earlier, a fall of 45.6%. It was the lowest monthly total since Adzuna began tracking graduate vacancies in 2016. At the market’s peak in 2017, more than 55,000 graduate jobs were being advertised, leaving the current figure around 85% below that peak.
The average advertised graduate salary was reported at £25,815, while recruitment remained particularly weak in sectors including healthcare, nursing, hospitality and logistics. Travel, teaching, construction and manufacturing were among the comparatively small number of areas showing growth in graduate opportunities.
The timing is striking. UCAS reported that a record 262,820 UK 18-year-olds had secured an undergraduate place at university or college in August 2026, 3% more than the previous year. Those students will not enter the graduate labour market immediately, but the figures illustrate the continuing expansion in participation at a time when advertised graduate opportunities have contracted sharply.
Competition is also increasing across the wider online jobs market. Adzuna recorded 2.14 jobseekers per vacancy in July, compared with 1.93 a year earlier. This is a market-wide measure rather than a graduate-specific ratio, but it demonstrates the broader deterioration in hiring conditions faced by new entrants and adds to the pressure on youth employment.
Youth Employment in a Weakening Jobs Market
Official vacancy figures show that the pressure on youth employment extends beyond graduates.
The ONS estimated 707,000 UK vacancies between May and July 2026, down 19,000 (or 2.7%) from a year earlier. Vacancies were also 10.3% below their pre-pandemic level. Outside the pandemic period, the last time vacancy numbers were this low was in 2014.
There were 2.5 unemployed people for every vacancy between April and June 2026, compared with 2.3 a year earlier. A higher ratio indicates a looser labour market, with more people competing for each available job.
The decline has not been uniform. Education recorded the largest quarterly percentage reduction in vacancies, falling 7.3%, while arts, entertainment and recreation recorded the largest annual percentage fall, at 17%. Human health and social work saw the largest annual reduction in absolute numbers.
The ONS also reports feedback from employers suggesting that increased labour costs and other operating expenses are discouraging some businesses from recruiting. A weaker overall vacancy market inevitably makes the youth employment challenge harder because inexperienced applicants are competing for fewer opportunities.
Social Mobility Creates Additional Recruitment Barriers
The number of vacancies is only part of the youth employment problem. How employers recruit can also determine who is able to access those opportunities.
Recent research by Zurich UK found that 28% of adults believed recruitment processes were designed to “weed out” working-class candidates, while 20% said they had personally experienced discrimination during recruitment because of their socioeconomic background. More than half (53%) believed workplaces contained “unspoken social rules”, and one-third said they struggled to navigate them.
Practical barriers were also significant. Some 24% had declined an interview because travelling to it was too expensive, 11% reported lacking access to technology needed for interviews, and 42% said they could not afford to undertake an unpaid internship. More than a quarter had struggled to access professional networks or mentors.
Socioeconomic background is not itself a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. Nevertheless, unnecessarily restrictive recruitment criteria may reduce social mobility and can also create discrimination risks where they disproportionately disadvantage groups protected under the Act.
Employers should therefore consider whether requirements such as attending a particular university, possessing experience that is not genuinely necessary, or demonstrating subjective “culture fit” are actually relevant to successful performance.
The CIPD recommends objective recruitment criteria and specifically cautions against relying on “culture fit”, which can become a proxy for selecting candidates who resemble existing employees in background, experience or presentation.
Structured interviews, transparent criteria, skills-based assessment and accessible recruitment processes can help employers identify potential rather than simply reward candidates who already understand corporate recruitment conventions. For youth employment, that distinction matters because access to a first job should not depend on already possessing the social and professional advantages that employment itself helps to build.
The Jobs Guarantee and Youth Employment
The Government’s principal direct youth employment intervention is the Jobs Guarantee, part of its wider £2.5 billion youth-employment programme.
The scheme is expected to support more than 90,000 young people into fully funded jobs over three years. The Government funds up to 25 hours of employment each week for six months at the applicable National Minimum Wage, together with relevant pension contributions and wraparound support intended to help participants remain in employment afterwards.
The first phase began in April 2026 in six areas: Birmingham and Solihull, the East Midlands, Greater Manchester, Hertfordshire and Essex, Central and East Scotland, and Southwest and Southeast Wales. The initial phase focused on eligible 18–21-year-olds who had been claiming Universal Credit and looking for work for 18 months.
The scheme is now moving towards national rollout. The Government says it will ultimately extend to eligible 18–24-year-olds who have been claiming Universal Credit and looking for work for 18 months, with more than 90,000 subsidised jobs expected by 2029. The first participants have already begun roles with employers including Boots.
The £2.5 billion figure sometimes associated with the initiative should be understood correctly: it relates to the Government’s wider youth employment investment, of which the Jobs Guarantee is one element. The broader programme includes Youth Hubs, the Youth Guarantee Gateway, workplace experience and training opportunities, and apprenticeship incentives.
Will Subsidised Jobs Solve the Problem?
The Jobs Guarantee addresses an important youth employment difficulty: young people cannot gain work experience if employers will not give them an initial opportunity.
But subsidising employment alone will not solve every aspect of the problem.
The Work Foundation argues that the scheme must create additional, good-quality employment, rather than simply subsidising positions that employers would otherwise have created. It has called for roles to provide training, security and progression, together with local support for employers, particularly smaller businesses that may have fewer resources to support young recruits.
The quality of placements will therefore matter as much as the number created. A six-month job can provide experience, confidence and references, but its longer-term value will be considerably greater if it leads to sustained employment, an apprenticeship, further training or a clear career route.
Employers participating in the scheme should approach placements as genuine employment opportunities rather than temporary additional labour. Appropriate induction, supervision, mentoring and meaningful work will be important if participants are to leave with materially better employment prospects. The success of the scheme as a youth employment measure will ultimately depend on whether subsidised placements become sustainable routes into longer-term work.
What Employers Can Do to Support Youth Employment
Employers cannot resolve the youth employment challenge alone, but their recruitment and workforce-planning decisions have a significant impact on whether young people can enter employment.
Businesses should consider whether entry-level vacancies genuinely require previous experience or whether skills could be developed after recruitment. Where AI removes routine junior tasks, employers should examine how entry routes can be redesigned rather than simply eliminated.
Recruitment processes should also be reviewed for unnecessary barriers. Educational requirements should be relevant to the job; interview criteria should be structured and transparent; automated screening should be monitored to ensure that suitable candidates are not inadvertently excluded; and work experience or internships should be designed so that participation is realistically accessible to people from different economic backgrounds.
Employers should also recognise the strategic value of junior recruitment. Filling every entry-level vacancy with an experienced candidate may solve an immediate operational problem, but organisations still need to develop the employees who will become their future specialists, supervisors and managers. Supporting youth employment is therefore not simply a social responsibility issue; it is also part of long-term workforce planning.
Youth Employment Outlook
The latest youth employment figures contain one encouraging development: the number of young people who are NEET fell during the most recent quarter. But the wider picture remains difficult.
Almost one million young people remain outside employment, education or training. Entry-level vacancies have contracted, graduate opportunities have fallen to their lowest level since Adzuna began recording them, and the overall number of vacancies remains substantially below its pre-pandemic level.
At the same time, the routes into work are becoming more difficult to navigate. Employers are creating fewer junior opportunities, experienced candidates are competing for some entry-level roles, and AI is reducing demand for certain routine tasks. Improving youth employment will therefore depend not only on creating more jobs, but on ensuring that young people still have realistic opportunities to gain experience, develop skills and progress within the workplace.
The Government’s Jobs Guarantee provides one route into employment for those furthest from the labour market, but lasting progress will require more than subsidised placements. It will depend on employers continuing to create genuine entry routes, redesigning junior work as technology evolves and recruiting in ways that recognise ability and potential as well as previous experience.
For young people, the central youth employment challenge is increasingly clear: the first job is becoming harder to obtain at precisely the point when securing that first opportunity has never been more important.
Employers: What This Means
The current youth employment market presents employers with both an immediate recruitment challenge and a longer-term workforce issue. Businesses may benefit from experienced candidates applying for junior roles and from using AI to automate routine work, but they also need to consider how younger workers will gain the experience and skills required to become tomorrow’s specialists, supervisors and managers.
- Review whether entry-level vacancies genuinely require previous experience or particular qualifications. Recruitment criteria should reflect what is necessary for the role and give appropriate weight to potential, transferable skills and the ability to learn.
- Where AI or automation removes routine junior tasks, consider redesigning entry-level roles rather than eliminating them altogether. Retaining meaningful human elements such as communication, judgement, problem-solving and client interaction can preserve valuable routes into work and progression.
- Examine recruitment processes for unnecessary barriers, including subjective “culture fit” assessments, inaccessible work experience and automated screening tools. Structured interviews, transparent criteria and skills-based assessment can help widen access while reducing discrimination risk.
- Consider how apprenticeships, work placements, mentoring and initiatives such as the Jobs Guarantee could support your future talent pipeline. Improving youth employment is not simply a social responsibility issue; maintaining effective entry routes is also an important part of long-term workforce planning.
