Young Brits say employers are making Neet crisis worse, as 4 in 5 suggest firms are not helping them into work
Just 18 per cent of those who responded to the survey said employers are “supportive” of hiring young people, yet almost half (47 per cent) believed that they were either “unsupportive” or “very unsupportive”
A shocking survey has suggested that four in five young people believe employers are failing to help them into work.
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In a poll shared exclusively with LBC, Youth Employment UK, a charity supporting youngsters, asked 11,500 people aged 11 to 30 about their experiences in education, access to transport and employment opportunities.
The annual Youth Voice Census has been widely used by policymakers, including the former health secretary Alan Milburn, who has been commissioned to conduct a review into the problems facing young people accessing work and recommend solutions.
Findings from this year’s survey suggest that despite the government’s efforts to improve employment prospects for the nearly one million 16-24-year-olds not in education, employment or training in the UK, many young people feel there is still insufficient support to help them secure a job.
Read more: Over-50s employment crisis on a 'similar' scale to NEETS, charity warns
Just 18 per cent of those who responded to the survey said employers are “supportive” of hiring young people, yet almost half (47 per cent) believed that they were either “unsupportive” or “very unsupportive”.
“This sense that young people aren't ambitious, aren't connected, isn't true,” Lauren Mistry, Deputy CEO of Youth Employment UK, told LBC.
“They want access to opportunity, that's really clear… What they are often met with are employers asking for high demands of experience, high requirements for really entry-level opportunities and really entry-level roles.
“From that perspective, it's where young people start to feel like actually, as a young person wanting to start showing their ambition and showing their opportunity, they are often met with barriers.”
Over the last year, the number of young people citing a dearth of work experience as a barrier to employment increased by over 20 per cent.
Nearly 6 in 10 youngsters (57 per cent) who responded to the survey said it was hampering their search for a job - making it the most frequently-cited factor preventing their career progression.
One of those who struggled to gain stable employment after leaving school was 20-year-old Luke. Having opted against university, he embarked on a brief stint in the hospitality sector before deciding he wanted to explore another sector.
“I live in a small town in the north west,” Luke said. “Most of those opportunities just weren't accessible for me. I didn't have my driving licence, so being able to commute into any big cities was kind of off the table.”
“The reality is that a lot of the system is still geared towards university, and then I definitely think there was more direction into going into university than there was helping people get things like apprenticeships.”
Luke reiterated the importance of ensuring that entry-level jobs are accessible to school-leavers: “Don't make young people compete for jobs requiring experience that they can't possibly have because they've just come out of sixth form like myself.
“Trying to make it accessible to all corners of the UK, not just the kind of big cities that have all of these apprenticeships on offer, where someone like myself, that's someone from a smaller town, isn't able to access it.”
“People around me are quite pessimistic,” Luke concluded.
Yesterday, the government unveiled plans to create 100,000 additional jobs in the retail sector by the end of the parliament.
As part of this, the Department for Work and Pensions announced a new work experience programme, Opening Shift, which will offer 11,000 18-24 year-olds two-to-four-week placements at retailers including John Lewis, Tesco and Costa Coffee.
Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, told LBC’s Nick Ferrari that the placements will help “give [a] chance to thousands of young people” while also “getting people off benefit and into work”.
Youth Employment UK’s report, which comes just a month before the second part of Milburn’s review is set to report, lays out a series of recommendations on how to tackle the problems cited by young people.
The charity is calling for the establishment of a “Young Person’s Entitlement”, providing youngsters with the foundations to adapt to the workplace from the age of 11 through greater access to careers education, employers’ fairs and AI training.
Recognising that the challenges vary across communities, the report also suggests tailored local solutions to the employment challenges faced by young people, as well as setting different expectations on businesses depending on their size.
The Department for Work and Pensions were approached for comment.