The ‘Unemployable’ generation: Britain’s triple lock is trapping young people out of work

The rate has risen to 5.1%, which is not far off the pandemic peak of 5.3%. Pandemic excluded, this is the highest rate since 2016. For men it’s worse. The rate is 5.5%, the same as the pandemic.

And it is worse still for the young. The latest NEET figures (16–24-year-olds) show that for the UK in July to September 2025, 238,000 young men were unemployed (130,000 young women) and 274,000 were economically inactive (306,000 young women).

Up until 2018, the male NEET unemployment rate was higher than economic inactivity – since then it has switched. It is estimated that at the end of 2024, there were 146,000 male NEETs who were economically inactive due to long-term or temporary sickness. This number has grown rapidly since the Covid pandemic.

So what is going on? First the rise of diagnosed mental health conditions has led to a generation more anxious, with more self doubt and less self confidence than ever before.

For young people the Covid pandemic response drove a coach and horses through the time when young people were learning to socialise, communicate and develop.

The figures are staggering. From 1 in 10 of 17 year olds in 2017 being diagnosed with a mental health disorder to 1 in 4 by 2022. This is the anxious generation. A generation where too many believe they can’t rather than they can.

Second, the sort of jobs young people used to do on leaving school have been disappearing. Some 500,000 plus to be precise since 2019 in retail and hospitality alone.

Then for the graduating population, graduate entry level jobs in law, finance and accounting, consultancy and the public sector have declined (possibly due to the effect of AI) spelling the end of the graduate premium. Too many degrees are simply not delivering the economic returns promised by the engineers of the UK’s highly contestable higher education system.

Payrolled employment has fallen by nearly 90,000 over the last quarter alone – again the largest fall since the pandemic. When faced with such employment insecurity can it be any wonder young people are seeking security elsewhere?

The final lock in the triple lock is the inability to leave the parental home. Rents are high. Mortgages are out of reach. So staying put in the childhood bedroom is an inevitable consequence.

Staying at home makes reaching adulthood even more of a climb for many young people. It creates inter-generational friction through extending adolescence and it is harming a whole generation who are trapped, feel trapped and are very angry about their fate.

The UK needs more than growth. It needs a new intergenerational settlement that stops transferring wealth from the young to the old. The Youth Guarantee is a good start to helping young people off welfare and into work but it is a pale imitation of the last Labour Government’s New Deal for Young People launched in 1998 which helped a million young people into work by 2006.

But young people need jobs where they live and play. This is the key to helping Generation Z become Generation Happy.

And the jobs they need must be good jobs, with career prospects created in sectors from construction to engineering to healthcare to care. The level of jobless young is a national emergency.

Let’s start treating it as such. Let’s remove the triple lock.

_______________

Nick Isles is the Director of the Centre for Policy Research on Men and Boys think tank

LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.

To contact us email opinion@lbc.co.uk