LONDON, Feb 26 (Reuters) – Nearly 1 million Britons aged 16-24 were not in employment, education or training at the end of last year, the second-highest \u200clevel in more than a decade, according to official data released on \u200cThursday.<\/p>\n
The rate of young people not in employment, education or training (NEET) is sometimes seen as a better guide \u200bto labour market difficulties than the headline youth unemployment rate, which was the highest in 10 years in the last quarter of 2025.<\/p>\n
Thursday’s data showed that the number of NEETs aged 16-24 rose to 957,000 in the last quarter of 2025 from 946,000 the quarter \u200cbefore – just short of 971,000 \u2060in the final quarter of 2024 which was the highest since 2014.<\/p>\n
The latest NEET rate is equivalent 12.8% of the workforce, up \u2060from 12.7% in the last quarter but below a 10-year high of 13.2% a year earlier and compares to an unemployment rate of 16.1% for 16-64 year olds.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, Bank \u200bof England \u200bChief Economist Huw Pill told a parliament \u200bcommittee that a rise in the \u200cminimum wage and employer social security charges had contributed to the difficulty young people face in getting a foothold in the job market.<\/p>\n
This view is shared by many academic economists: 15 out of 19 in a poll by Britain’s National Institute of Economic and Social Research and the London School of Economics’ Centre for Macroeconomics judged that government \u200cpolicy had a were a “very” or “moderately important” driver \u200bof youth unemployment.<\/p>\n
LSE economics professor Ricardo Reis said “government policy \u200bchanges are the most likely \u200bproximate cause for such large movements in young joblessness”, though he added \u200cthat there was not conclusive evidence, \u200band others pointed to \u200bbroader economic weakness and artificial intelligence<\/a> as factors.<\/p>\n Louise Murphy, a senior economist at the Resolution Foundation think tank, said finance minister Rachel Reeves should use a \u200bfiscal statement next week to \u200cwiden eligibility for work placements and to pause plans to narrow the gap \u200bbetween the minimum wage rates for 18-20 year olds and older workers.<\/p>\n (Reporting \u200bby David Milliken, editing by Andy Bruce)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, Feb 26 (Reuters) – Nearly 1 million Britons aged 16-24 were not in employment, education or training…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,2266,393,4884,176695,1144,229882,712,16,16919,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-790093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-education","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-national-institute-of-economic-and-social-research","15":"tag-northern-ireland","16":"tag-ricardo-reis","17":"tag-scotland","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-unemployment-rate","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116136577978493714","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}